California Lawmaker Pushes to Require Armed Officers in Schools

Dec. 9, 2024

After the shooting of two kindergarten students at Feather River Adventist School in Oroville last week, Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R- Corona, used the occasion to resurrect his legislation requiring all California schools to have an armed police officer present during school hours.

By Andrew Sheeler

Source The Sacramento Bee (TNS)

After the shooting of two kindergarten students at Feather River Adventist School in Oroville last week, Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R- Corona, used the occasion to resurrect his legislation requiring all California schools to have an armed police officer present during school hours.

SACRAMENTO, California -- After the shooting of two kindergarten students at Feather River Adventist School in Oroville last week, Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R- Corona, used the occasion to resurrect his legislation requiring all California schools to have an armed police officer present during school hours.

His bill, AB 68, reopens the fierce debate over the role of armed police in schools.

Essayli, in reintroducing the legislation, said in a statement, “Yesterday, two innocent children were shot in cold blood at school. This is not a time for empty rhetoric, it is a time for action.”

“As elected officials we have a sacred duty to protect our most vulnerable citizens from harm, this includes our children at school,” he added.

The legislation has the seal of approval of at least one California law enforcement officer: Riverside County Sheriff (and rumored 2026 gubernatorial contender) Chad Bianco.

“We need armed officers at our schools,” Bianco said in a statement, calling the Oroville shooting a “perfect example of the tragic consequence of not having an officer immediately available to intervene.”

Armed police aren’t necessarily a guarantee for student safety.

During the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the shooter killed 19 children and two teachers, and wounded 18 others, while police waited to act, prompting a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that slammed the response for “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training,” according to the Texas Tribune.

And in 2023, the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute released a report — “School Resource Officers: Is Police Presence in Schools Doing More Harm than Good?” — citing studies that found mixed results for School Resource Officers, or SROs. At least one study said that they did not improve school safety.

“Given the paucity of good research and the mixed findings of what does exist, expanding SROs is something all levels of government ... should be hesitant to do,” the report concluded.

AB 68 will likely face stiff resistance in the Legislature, where both houses are controlled by a Democratic supermajority. Essayli’s previous bill on the subject, AB 3038, died in the Assembly Education Committee last spring on a party-line vote.