On Tuesday night an open discussion about children’s safety in Baltimore City Public Schools.
It’s fresh on student, staff, and parents minds after what happened in Florida last week.
Some want to see school police officers carrying guns in school, right now that’s not allowed.
To change that it would take a state law, and on Thursday the discussion was about school police policy as a whole.
Cristina Duncan Evans has worked in the district for 14 years and she said that arming the officers isn’t the answer.
"We need to demilitarize our schools,” said Evans. “Having a gun in school does not make me personally feel safer. Having the person, having the School police officer in my school makes me feel safer. But the gun that the officer carries makes me feel more worried."
Sgt. Clyde Boatright, the President of the City School Police Union said officers need every tool at their disposal.
"The guns need to be on our officers not in a safe," said Boatright.
He says the current policy needs to be reformed.
"At this point, our officers are able to report it via a radio to our communications department and in a sense, they must shelter in place,” said Boatright. “If they decide to go and retrieve that weapon from out of the safe they've essentially taken the law into their own hands and they could subject themselves to criminal charges.”
He said that’s not fair.
“It's not fair at all. We're trained, sworn, certified police officers."
Tuesday night was a forum, there will be a policy committee meeting on March 20 to talk about the topic more.
