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Associated Press
COUEUR D’ALENE, Idaho — Coeur d’Alene police have asked school officials to allow officers to bring their patrol rifles into city schools so that officers will be more capable of protecting students.
Capt. Ron Clark, supervisor of the school resource officers, said they need more firepower because school shootings typically involve heavily armed attackers.
“The rifles, they are more accurate at greater distances and they also will penetrate body armor if the suspect happens to be wearing that,” Clark told Coeur d’Alene School District officials at their board meeting Monday, the Coeur d’Alene Press reported.
He said the rifles would be locked in gun safes in the schools and the officers would be the only ones with access to them.
“If it’s out in their vehicle in the parking lot, that wouldn’t be a situation where they’d be able to get to that rifle,” Clark said.
The rifles can be used to shoot assailants up to about 1,200 feet, Clark said, while the handguns officers carry have an effective range of only about 75 feet.
He noted the length of the hallways in schools can be nearly 200 feet.
Clark cited a January incident where a person parked about 500 feet away from Lake City High School with a high-powered rifle in the vehicle.
“Luckily, we were able to take him down without any incident, but that just showed the need, that there was a lot of feet in distance that we have to cover,” Clark said.
In that incident, a former student was arrested after police said his mother called them to say her son had been behaving erratically and might have weapons.
Clark said officers would carry the rifles into the school in duffel bags in an unloaded and “broke-down configuration.”
Officer Mark Todd, one of the officers who patrols in schools, said once the rifles were inside, they would be locked in safes “patrol ready, loaded and locked.”
The rifles would not be left overnight in the schools, he said, but would be unloaded and taken back out by the officers.
“We are well-equipped by today’s current standards but in terms of an emergency situation, when an assailant comes better equipped than us, we’d like to at least have this availability,” Todd said.
Board members are expected to make a decision in December.