#so fuck you btw if you want no training for autism for police

[fictionplumis]

In light of Last Week Tonight talking about school resource officers, I want to share a story of MY experience with my resource officer in high school. Keep in mind that where I live, having a resource officer (or two or three) is so common that I literally didn't know it wasn't a thing ALL schools do until I watched that episode.

In my school, we weren't allowed to eat lunch in the hallways. And I understood it, for the most part, with a staggered lunch schedule and all, there are classes going on for some students while others are eating lunch and blah blah blah. But the hallway my locker was in happened to be this weird transitionary hallway that lead from the main courtyard out to the portable buildings that were put up between the main school buildings and the stadium. The only thing you need to know about this hallway is that there are lockers and a total of three doors: two doors at either end to enter and exit the hallway, and a pair of doors off to the side the lead to a locked hallway between gym changing rooms or something like that. Basically, NO classrooms in this hallway.

My friend and I would eat in that hallway, hidden in the alcove for the door of the locked hallway so that anyone passing by out front wouldn't see us through the little windows and we were meticulous about picking up our trash so no one would know we ate lunch there.

Why?

It's fucking Florida, my dude. The cafeteria interior only seated about half the number students in any given lunch period and the rest would have to sit outside. It was fucking HOT, and HUMID, and MISERABLE. This hallway was quiet and had AC.

Now I brought a packed lunch to school while my friend bought her lunch, so I stand in line with her while she got her food and then I would grab mine from my locker, which was literally right across the hall from the little alcove.

One day we get to the hallway and the door is locked.

The school resource officer sees us trying to open the door and he comes over and tells us, "I know you girls like to each lunch in that hallway, and I know you know you're not supposed to, so I'm going to start locking this door every lunch period."

To which I reply, "Okay, but my locker is in this hallway and my lunch is in my locker."

Deadass, this fucker goes, "Then I guess you're not eating today. From now on I would suggest grabbing your lunch from your locker before the second bell rings this period, because I'm not going to be letting you back in this hallway to get it once I lock the door."

I will never forget that bastard. This was back in 2011/2012, and I still have a vivid memory of this interaction because I was fucking pissed. He could have unlocked the door and watched me grab my lunch, exit the hallway, and locked the door behind me. But no, he thought he was teaching me some fucking lesson for wanting to eat my lunch in air conditioned peace where it wasn't bothering anyone I wasn't hurting anything.

And I am a small white girl. (Not a girl, but for appearances sake, to him, I was a small white girl.) Thinking back on it, I can't even imagine how that guy must have treated students of color or those with disabilities like autism.

Back when my mom was in school--my sixty year old mother, BTW, her teacher had her and her classmates write a letter to the president. My mom's letter was about how schools were built, operated, and felt like prisons. That was a good 45 years ago. Now they're worse, and they come with their own fucking armed security guards that are actual fucking police, who can and DO arrest kids for the most inane things, and often don't have any additional training beyond their police training.

New reports about the shooting in Ulvade first said that one of the locking doors had been "propped open". These are doors have a setting where you can freely open them from inside the school, but need a key to be unlocked in order to open them from the outside of the school. I've never been to a school that didn't have these doors. Now the elementary school I went to didn't have any gates or fences around it, though it does now. My middle school had three buildings surrounding a courtyard that was completely gated off and could only be entered through those special doors. Like a fucking prison. My high school was mostly open to anyone to just fucking walk into, which in hindsight is now kind of fucking terrifying.

But truthfully, whether the door didn't lock properly or was propped open doesn't fucking matter. Because those doors were mostly seen as an inconvenience and it was common practice for someone to fucking accidentally lock themselves out and start knocking on the door when they saw someone in the hallway so that they would open the door for them. Those doors really aren't much of a deterrent. Just like school resource officers aren't much of a deterrent.

The answer to gun violence isn't more bulletproofing, it isn't turning schools into jails, and it definitely isn't put more people with guns on campus, they'll stop the shooter!

It's fucking better gun control and less fucking cops.