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Where was the liberal “outrage” over Clinton’s “COPS in School” federal grant program?

Another day, another sad yet infuriating adventure into “that was then, this is now” Democrat hypocrisy – via Bryan Preston [1]:

The NRA came out with a proposal to post armed police officers at schools to prevent or at least minimize the next school shooting. The left promptly called the idea nuts.

Turns out, it wasn’t a new idea. President Bill Clinton proposed the same idea in April 2000 [2]. He implemented it, too, only to see Barack Obama cut the funding for it. [3]

So, if you’re keeping score, the NRA agrees with a 12-year old Bill Clinton position on school security. The left just called a former Democrat president “crazy.”

The program Preston is talking about is called “COPS in School” – a federal grant program started in 1999 [4]:

The COPS in Schools (CIS) grant program is designed to help law enforcement agencies hire new, additional school resource officers (SROs) to engage in community policing in and around primary and secondary schools. CIS provides an incentive for law enforcement agencies to build collaborative partnerships with the school community and to use community policing efforts to combat school violence.

The COPS in Schools program provides a maximum federal contribution up of to $125,000 per officer position for approved salary and benefit costs over the 3-year grant period, with any remaining costs to be paid with local funds. Officers paid with CIS funding must be hired on or after the grant award start date. All jurisdictions that apply must also demonstrate that they have primary law enforcement authority over the school(s) identified in their application, and also demonstrate their inability to implement this project without federal assistance. Funding will begin when the new officers are hired on or after the grant award date, and will be paid over the course of the 3-year grant period.

COPS has announced 19  rounds of funding under the COPS in Schools program, including five that were a part of the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, a joint initiative between the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. The Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant program was developed to provide students, schools, and communities with the benefit of enhanced educational, mental health, and law enforcement services to promote a comprehensive healthy childhood development.

That page was an old page that covered through 2005. I don’t know what the status of the federal program is now, but I did see this recent article from KMOV that sheds a little light [5]:

ST. LOUIS COUNTY (KMOv.com) — Law enforcment and schools around St. Louis are asking Congress to help prevent another attack like the tragedy in Connecticut.

More than 100 school leaders met with area police departments to discuss school safety.

Officials plan to ask Congress to renew the Cops In School initiative. Federal funding to put officers in schools ended in 2003.

“So what we’re looking for is for Congress to reinstitute the Cops in Schools program, said St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch. “We think that’s the best way to deal with an armed intruder, is to have a fully trained, armed police officer on the property.”

Indeed.

The best I can piece together here is that, contra to the KMOV piece, this program on a federal level ended in 2005, but there at the state level, I know there are cops on the premises in select school districts around the country – presumably due to state funding.

In any event, what we have here is the head of the NRA calling for more armed police officers in school, something that is already in place at the local level and – at least for a time was supported at the federal level thanks to a push by President Bill Clinton, yet the Usual Suspects and other Useful Idiots are screaming for the NRA’s head on a stick right now, outraged at such a suggestion.   Where were they when Clinton first put this in place, and where have they been at the school districts that already do provided armed police/guards on site?

Liberal stupidity and hypocrisy truly knows no bounds.  The debate on “gun control” and whether or not to have more armed security in the schools deserves serious consideration of all options on the table, not hollow, ignorant, ill-informed,  half-baked arguments based purely on emotion [6] and visceral bias against guns.  Would someone alert the mainstream media, please? This starts with them – but certainly doesn’t end there.

Update – Monday 1:20 PM: Here’s a screencap for the idiotic, obnoxious liberals trying to comment that they don’t see a “COPS in Schools” page at the link I provided above – which I just clicked and got this from:

COPS in Scoools screencap
COPS in Scoools screencap

Any more questions? Right.