Keeping students safe is as universal of a goal as you’re going to find in such a divided country. The problem, however, is that we’re divided to a point that we can’t even agree on how to keep them safe. Some people want to restrict the rights of ordinary people to such a degree that they can delude themselves into thinking students can’t be hurt by violent people.
The rest of us recognize that violent people aren’t going to be stopped with laws. If they were, the laws against hurting kids would be more than enough.
So, in that vein, it seems Missouri is stepping up the game a few dozen notches and really taking the goal of keeping kids safe seriously.
On May 28, Republican lawmakers sent Senate Bill 905 to Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe. This is a purely Republican bill: Not one Democrat in either chamber voted for the bill; not one Republican voted against it.
Introduced by David Gregory, a state senator from Chesterfield, SB905 would create a new category of school protection officer: The Missouri Ranger.
The Missouri Ranger bridges the gap between armed teachers/staff and school resource officers, who are sworn officers employed by a law enforcement agency and assigned to a school district or campus.
Missouri Rangers, who may be district employees or volunteers, must complete 160 hours of training. The curriculum will be set by the Missouri Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST) and must include state and federal constitutional and statutory law; firearms training; close quarter combat; de-escalation; active shooter training; defensive tactics; and bomb and arson instruction.
Since it’s fairly common for school protection jobs to be filled by retired law enforcement officers or retired military, Ranger candidates must pass a physical fitness test prior to being admitted for the training program. For those 35 and younger, the test includes doing 40 pushups in less than one minute and running 1.5 miles in under 12 minutes and 30 seconds. The POST Commission will establish tests for candidates older than 35.
“You have to be in physical fitness superior to a Marine,” Gregory said. “Once you pass that fitness test, we then put the rangers through pretty serious training modeled after U.S. Air Marshals.”
After completion of the training, Rangers receive a certificate, a badge, and are vested with limited police powers, including arrest. Their authority is limited to school district property, including buses. They also get the same qualified immunity as regular law enforcement officers.
School resources officers would still be a thing, but the Rangers will be a completely different animal, and while 160 hours of training isn’t exactly the same thing as what, say, the Texas Rangers get, the Missouri Rangers will be fulfilling a different and more limited mission.
With the physical fitness standards being substantial, it’s likely to be attractive to a lot of people looking for that kind of challenge and that kind of mission. It’s long been discussed that putting combat veterans in public schools would be a good way to put an end to school shootings, and while this isn’t an exact version of that discussion, it’s along those lines. It’s just opened up to others beyond veterans or former police officers.
And it will keep out those who are looking at some cushy retirement gig where they don’t really have to work, but can supplement their police pension or military retirement check.
This is for warriors.
Will it work? I think it will, but only time will really tell.
Unfortunately, the real test will be the lack of something, rather than something easily quantifiable. Luckily, the Rangers will be doing more than guarding schools. They’ll be law enforcement officers, and Missouri schools have enough troubles that they’ll still have plenty of work. It sounds like some pretty well-rounded training for the mission, too.
I look forward to seeing how this works out.
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