I’m going to be blasted for this article, but somebody has to say it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mike Taylor is a great sheriff and also a great man for Pittsylvania County. Let’s get that out of the way to begin with.<\/p>\n
I’ve got no problems with most of his School Safety Initiative. Locked entryways are almost a common sense protection for most limited-access buildings. Surveillance cameras can be creepy at times but are quite useful in a school situation. Emergency drills should be done as often as fire drills and could probably be incorporated in the same process. Anonymous tiplines are as close to no-cost as anything could possibly be. Walk-through metal detectors are nice but can be a giant pain is not calibrated and used properly. Deputies in each school sure would be nice, but the real-life cost for that is highly prohibitive.<\/p>\n
Reality stinks because for initiatives like this, you’ve got to get the money to pay for this. In low-budget Pittsylvania County, the Board of Supervisors quickly said “That’s a nice idea” and moved along without any funding for this project. Yes, the federal government does offer Free Money for these types of things… but nowhere close to the amount that would be needed to keep ideas like “deputies at every school” going forever.<\/p>\n
Enter the “It’s All About The Kids” non-profit organization designed to help raise the money necessary to put these ideas into motion. They raised $9000 in their latest effort and that could go a long way into establishing some of the lower cost ideas such as the anonymous tiplines and the emergency drills. I applaud their efforts and hope that these fundraisers can add physical security to the schools.<\/p>\n
Here’s where I’m going to get yelled at. I just can’t support the costs of hiring new deputies to be at every school. That’s a recurring cost that taxpayers simply can’t bear perpetually, no matter if the tax money comes from local, state or federal money. There’s no way to “win” this discussion because the other side can easily use the “We can never be too safe” argument, but that argument only works in a world where we don’t have to pay for anything. It’s very hard to have to make this statement when you’re confronted with an organization called “It’s All About The Kids” and they’re giving t-shirts out to the children that say “Help me stay safe.”<\/p>\n
Pittsylvania County schools have a 0% violent intrusion rate like over 99.99% schools in the country. The kids have been and continue to be safe from that type of attack simply based on statistics. If anything, the threat to Pittsylvania County school children comes from within their own schools, but that’s another matter. Instead of focusing on the $1.6 million needed to start the entire program, start using the funds that are raised wisely to add to the physical security of the buildings. Find a way to increase deputies’ visits to schools during their regular patrol shifts. Use what you’ve got and don’t throw a million dollar expense on the taxpayers.<\/p>\n
“It’s all about the kids.” Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s only mostly about the kids and it’s a lot about the taxpayers’ money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m going to be blasted for this article, but somebody has to say it.<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20,22,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newscentral","category-opinioncentral","category-pittsylvania-county","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-2fl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5405,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/27\/danville-pittsylvania-county-fair-photo-recap-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":8639,"position":0},"title":"Danville-Pittsylvania County Fair \u2013 Photo Recap #3","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"September 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the third in our series on the Danville-Pittsylvania County Fair photos. This one focuses on the rides.","rel":"","context":"In "EventsCentral"","block_context":{"text":"EventsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/eventscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5402,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/09\/27\/danville-pittsylvania-county-fair-photo-recap-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":8639,"position":1},"title":"Danville-Pittsylvania County Fair \u2013 Photo Recap #2","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"September 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the second in a series of photo recaps from the 2009 Danville-Pittsylvania County Fair. This time, let's look at some of the animals.","rel":"","context":"In "EventsCentral"","block_context":{"text":"EventsCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/eventscentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4617,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/12\/keeping-an-eye-on-the-pittsylvania-county-bos\/","url_meta":{"origin":8639,"position":2},"title":"Keeping an eye on the Pittsylvania County BoS…","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"July 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a new blog in the area that's watching the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors and it's worth checking out. (Editor's Note: I was sure that I had posted this article before but it must have fell through the cracks during an upgrade process. My apologies to the bloggers over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LinkCentral"","block_context":{"text":"LinkCentral","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/linkcentral\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11695,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/01\/05\/breakdown-pittsylvania-county-bos-organizational-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":8639,"position":3},"title":"BreakDown: Pittsylvania County BoS Organizational Meeting","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"January 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"We made our predictions for Chairman of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors yesterday and we were comfortable with them until around 2PM today. That's when we started figuring out that things weren't as they appeared to be. Let's do a BreakDown on what happened and what it means... Brenda\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BreakDown"","block_context":{"text":"BreakDown","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/breakdown\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":23275,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2016\/04\/26\/breaking-pittsylvania-county-standoff-in-progress\/","url_meta":{"origin":8639,"position":4},"title":"BREAKING: Pittsylvania County Standoff In Progress","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"April 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"UPDATE: The Pittsylvania County Sheriff's Office has confirmed our original story in an 11 PM press release. We've gotten the sourcing needed to publish this breaking news story. SouthsideCentral has confirmed through multiple sources that a Pittsylvania County sheriff's deputy was fired on while attempting to serve a warrant at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Breaking News"","block_context":{"text":"Breaking News","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/newscentral\/breaking-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/0yAV3PH.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7258,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/09\/25\/photos-from-the-2010-danville-pittsylvania-county-fair\/","url_meta":{"origin":8639,"position":5},"title":"Photos from the 2010 Danville-Pittsylvania County Fair","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"September 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The 2010 Danville-Pittsylvania County Fair finished a 9-day run and it was the best one ever! Here's a slideshow of some photos from this year's fair.","rel":"","context":"In "Danville"","block_context":{"text":"Danville","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/locations\/danville\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8641,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639\/revisions\/8641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}