Sometimes the good guy with a gun uses has baton instead

A 14 year old with a butcher’s knife and a clown mask inside a middle school cafeteria is not something to be taken lightly. But one School Resource Officer stopped the threat.

A school resource officer is speaking out for the first time after he was deemed a hero for stopping a middle school student armed with a clown mask and two butcher knifes.

“It didn’t really sink in until it was over with,” Deputy Danny Lindley told WBTV.

The incident happened Tuesday morning at West Rowan Middle School in Salisbury.

Investigators say the student started waving a butcher knife ‘wildly in the air’ while wearing a clown mask. It happened in the school’s cafeteria.

That’s when Lindley found the 14-year-old student waving a 12-inch butcher knife.

I find it interesting what the deputy said about his choice in weapons.

Wednesday morning, Lindley said he could have shot the teen, but decided to use a less lethal method to stop him.

“A person with a knife, we’re basically trained that we can use up to and including deadly force,” Lindley added. “I felt that since there were no other children around him and no one was in immediate danger that I would start at the lower end of the use of force continuum which would be the asp baton.”

A gutsy choice, as a butcher knife is just as sharp in the hands of a 14 year old as it is in the hands of an adult.

This deputy showed up with several choices. He had his fists, his baton, and his gun. He might have had pepper spray as well. He had a choice and he selected the baton and won. What would you have been allowed to use? What choices would you have been permitted? What choices would the staff of that school been allowed had there been no School Resource Officer available to take the risk for them?

Sadly, that’s not a rhetorical question.

School officials say it shows the importance of the School Resource Officer program in middle schools. Those positions had been eliminated in Rowan County, but were brought back after grant money was found to fund the positions.

Resource Officers in Rowan-Salisbury middle schools were restored in March of this year.

Anyone want to bet that the elementary schools don’t have School Resource Officers? Who would be there to stop an adult from taking a knife to any one of the elementary schools and carving up the staff and students until the police showed up?

We need a better system than one that expects school staff to die as human shields until the authorized forcible response unit manages to arrive.

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