Texas Schools to Get Armed Marshals

MAXWELL, Texas— Texas House member Jason Villalba has followed through on legislation which he believes will protect schoolchildren from active shooters. Mark Anderson caught up with Villalba during a Maxwell, Texas address. In his brief remarks that morning to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, Rep. Villalba told some three dozen law enforcement and training officers about his recently enacted legislation—which creates a whole new type of Texas law enforcement officer known as a school marshal.

This inaugural class of school-marshal trainers met with Villalba at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, a rural Central-Texas facility where SWAT team members and other officers train.

To underscore the urgency and importance of protecting school pupils from armed intruders on school grounds, Villalba invoked the specter of the deadly Sandy Hook school shootings in December of 2012 in Connecticut.

In a press conference just after his remarks, Villalba, a Republican from the Dallas area, told WHDT that House Bill 1009 received strong bipartisan support in the Texas House and Senate before Gov. Rick Perry signed it into law.

Formally called the Protection of Texas Children Act, this law does not force Texas school districts to adopt the marshal plan.
But Villalba, who’s already receiving inquiries from other states—including Oklahoma, South Dakota and Nevada—anticipates elementary schools being first in line to provide staff members who will voluntarily sign up as school marshals.

A volunteer must pay the upfront costs to become a marshal, unless state grant monies or subsidies become available. A marshal can be any member of the school administration, faculty or support staff who would receive over 80 hours of firearms training, equal to the training police officers receive.

In a prepared statement, Villalba noted: “These training standards will require 80 hours of classroom and simulation modules, ten times the amount currently required by CHL [concealed-handgun license] standards.”

A would-be marshal also must undergo the same mental-health screening and background check that’s applied to police officer candidates. These plainclothes marshals—who “blend in” as “confidential” in-house members of law enforcement—are to be provided with police-style pistols, not rifles.

At the press conference, Villalba added: “We’ll only have one school marshal per 400 students.” Therefore, he said a 1,200-student elementary or middle school would have three marshals, yet smaller schools would only have one.

Villalba summarized that small and medium-size school districts that don’t already have campus police or other protection, are lining up to try this program, beginning this fall.

Download your free Next News “Heroes & Villains” Poster here: http://nextnewsnetwork.com/the-2013-heroes-villains-posters

Donate USD: http://nnn.is/donate-dollars
Donate BTC: http://nnn.is/donate-bitcoin

LIVE: http://NextNewsNetwork.com
Facebook: http://Facebook.com/NextNewsNet
Twitter: http://Twitter.com/NextNewsNet
Sub: http://NNN.is/the_new_media
Meet the Next News Team: http://youtu.be/2QnNKwQ2WkY
Hashtag: #N3

About:
Next News Network’s WHDT World News program airs daily at 6pm and 11pm Eastern on Comcast, DirecTV and Over-the-Air and Online at http://NNN.is/on-WHDT

WHDT World News is available to 6 million viewers from South Beach to Sebastian, Florida and to 2 million viewers in Boston, Massachusetts via WHDN.

WHDT broadcasts on RF channel 44 (virtual channel 9) from Palm City and is carried on cable TV channels 44 (SD) and 1044 (HD) by AT&T, on cable channels 17 (SD) and 438 (HD) in West Palm Beach by Comcast, on satellite channel 44 (SD) in West Palm Beach by DIRECTV, and on WHDN-Boston which broadcasts on RF channel 38 (virtual channel 6) from the Government Center district in downtown Boston.

More about WHDT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHDT