WE NEED POLICE IN SCHOOLS

There is an epidemic of violence brewing across America in its schools, and I think it's well past time to get serious about it and begin installing a police presence in every one of them. Especially in the middle and high schools.

In Baltimore, Maryland a teacher was attacked by a student in her classroom after asking the student to sit down. Rather than help the teacher in distress, the other students simply cheered on the attack. In Waycross, Georgia a group of third grade students plotted to murder their teacher because she had reprimanded one student for standing on a chair. In Cazenova, Wisconsin, just outside of Madison, a student shot and killed his principal because he was angry about being teased by the other students. And of course, who can ever forget the Columbine massacre in Colorado that seemed to be the beginning of a long stream of never ending news stories about kids and guns, and violence in schools.

This is something that we simply must get a grip on. It's a situation fast spiraling out of control. Unless we do something to at least curb the violence now, I fear it's a situation that will only get worse.

Of course, one can argue that we can't overreact. These are just isolated incidents, aren't they? Not every school in America is experiencing violence to the degree reported in these stories, and out of thousands of schools across the nation, these incidents of violence are a tiny fraction. Maybe so. But the fact that it can happen at all is scary enough, however fractional the problem may actually be, to suggest to me that putting police officers in every single public school in America is something well worth our consideration.

Granted, it's a costly undertaking. Taxpayers will, of course, have to flip the bill for it. Municipalities will, no doubt, have to hire additional police officers to fill the need. Special training for officers who deal with children and teenagers may be needed, costing taxpayers yet more. But isn't it a cost worth paying? If we can afford to pay to scatter police officers along our nation's highways in order to catch speeding motorists, we can certainly afford to pay to put a few police officers in our schools to protect our children.