Armed Police Guard Sandy Hook Students as Classes Resume

Thursday is the first day classes resume for students of Sandy Hook Elementary, but they won’t be returning to their old school building. A nearby school has been refurbished for use as the new Sandy Hook Elementary.

More than 400 students from Newtown will now travel to nearby Monroe, Connecticut where a previously shuttered junior high has been transformed for their use. While the surroundings are new, the students’ desks and personal belongings have, as much as possible, been transferred from the old school to make it seem a bit familiar.

After the massacre that killed 20 students and six adults, the issue of gun controlbecame a political football. When NRA head Wayne LaPierre broke his silence one week after the tragedy, he called for placing armed cops atevery school in America. This was immediately ridiculed by the left asa suggestion that more guns were the solution to gun violence.

But at the new Sandy Hook Elementary Thursday, common sense won out over political posturing. There was a heavy police presence, including multiple police cars parked out front. Officers guarded the entrance to the building and welcomed students on every bus while others checked the IDs of every adult who drove up to the new school to ensure they were the parent of a student. At a press conference Wednesday, Monroe police Lt. Keith White said, “right now it has to be the safest school in America.”

While the AP story used in reports at Huffington Post and USA Today made prominent mention of the heavy police presence, this fact somehow escaped mention by the NY Times. In their penultimate paragraph, authors Peter Applebome and Marc Santora write, “Given all the attention on the new Sandy Hook Elementary School, theauthorities said there would be increased security to ensure that therewere no problems.” But they offer no description of what this “increased security” would look like. Times’ readers get the quote from Lt. White saying it’s the safest school in America but no description of the heavy police presence that made it that way.