Photo credit to Catherine Powell
Ridgewood Schools on Lock Down this afternoon
October 08.2015
the staff of the Rdiregwood blog
Ridgewood NJ ,Ridgewood Schools on lock down after student said he saw a person dressed in black with a gun just past noon near the school..
At least 6 Ridgewood squad cars and 2 un-marked cars encircled the areas.Police had their rifles out and bullet-proof vets. After approx. 45 minutes, they gave the all clear sign.
Police barred reporters from the sight , but news helicopters arrived just while the search was ending
Letter from Superintendent says the mystery was a man seen by a student carrying a cell phone. The student thought the cell phone was a gun. Whoops.
we’ve got these kids all keyed up
Paranoia will rule the day we will continue to see more and more of this on a nation wide basis.
Arm various anonymous teachers.
It’s a good deterrent
The Chief must have missed this photo op.
7:40 deterrent for what? The actual shooters almost all are on suicide missions so they wont care. You could try to argue that armed teachers would be able to resolve active shooter situations faster but there is no deterrent effect.
In reality, arming teachers is a really dumb idea. You would now have guns in schools increasing the chance some kid would get one of them from a teacher. Not to mention if the armed teachers are anonymous, then law enforcement clearing a building would never know who was supposed to be armed. In reality, 99.9% of the incidents are nothing just like this one was. But armed teachers would increase the chance that some keyed up teacher would shoot some parent like this one who was carrying a cell phone.
It seems like in this situation there was an appropriate and rapid reaction by the police. Facts came to light pretty quickly and the situation was resolved. Lets applaud what worked instead of adding fuel to the fire.