Back in the day before the Left controlled the social narrative through linguistic intimidation (i.e. illegal “immigration”), I was an armed School Resource Officer. In the early 1980s (and especially in my home state of Oklahoma) we called things what they were: a School Security Officer (SSO). The title itself put n’er-do-wells on notice that the Tulsa School District was taking the security of their children seriously. It was publicized on the local news along with the reasons for the necessity of putting armed guards on duty in our public schools. They were under threat not only from without but from within.
Mass school shootings were unheard of back then. Justice at all levels was swifter and more sure. Children weren’t having babies. More Parents were actually parenting. Teachers weren’t the Useful Idiots of the Socialists and more (but not all) parents supported the discipline imposed by the school Principal. His “Board of Education” had holes in it for maximum effect. The major problems were drugs and gangs. Hiring off-duty law enforcement officers was a no-brainer.
At that time, 1979-1980, I was a deputy with the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Department. I was a Vietnam Marine, had a Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice and all but my thesis for a Master’s degree in Public Administration. I had both an excellent education and outstanding prior experience in the military and subsequent law enforcement positions. I was also the Oklahoma State Junior Division Judo Champion ten years before and had a few years of Tae Kwon Do karate under my belt. But the most important qualifications I had were a love of teaching, a love for the kids and a visceral hatred of bullying. That’s what crime is really- bullying.
On one of my days off, I was substitute teaching a journalism class at one of the high schools. It was a small classroom with about ten students. The bell rang and they filed out the door. As I was collecting my things I heard someone shouting the most obscene profanities just outside. As a deputy substituting as a teacher I was still armed but wore my duty weapon concealed. Upon hearing the ruckus outside I approached the door and saw what I can only characterize as the “mouse that roared.” One of my white, female students was crying and a tall, white, muscular male was shouting obscenities at her while grabbing her arm. Between the two was a diminutive but courageous young, black male defending the young girl. I asked what was going on and the young, black male told me the big guy was her ex-boyfriend and was forcing her to leave campus with him. The boyfriend was 19 and not a student at the school.
I told the bully to release her arm and to watch his language. He responded by disparaging my mother. I told him we were going to the principle’s office and he told me to have sex with myself. He turned to descend the adjacent stairs to the first floor. I followed with my right shoulder behind his left shoulder informing him that, yes, we were going to the Principle’s office. At the bottom of the stairs there is a double door leading to the hallway with another set of double doors to the left leading outside to the parking lot. I stood in front of the bully and told him again we were going to the Principle’s office. He repeated his suggestion upon which I asked a passing student to ask the Principle and the on-duty Security Officer (a Tulsa PD officer I knew) to come to my location.
Immediately upon seeing me do this the bully tried going through me to escape. When he pushed me in the chest I punched him squarely in the face. I don’t know if it was the shock of an adult hitting him or the force of my blow that knocked him literally on his ass. His eyes bulged out, his legs locked straight out and he sat there momentarily dazed resting both hands beside him on the floor. I heard another passing student gasp “Mr. ____ just hit a student!” That brought the bully back to reality. He jumped up and tried running out the doors. I grabbed him by the belt and the shirt collar and attempted to “guide” him down the hallway to the Principle’s office. Unfortunately the door post separating the two doors was in the way and, in his effort to escape, his face collided with the post. He continued struggling and we ended up going through the outside doors and onto the ground. I had just controlled him with a judo technique when both the Principle and the Security Officer arrived. I stood the bully up and he immediately complained of me hitting him for no reason. The SO asked me what happened and I told him. Officer ___ asked the bully “Is it true you pushed him?” To which the bully said “Yeah! He was in my way!”
Now pause for a minute. How many of you readers think I was wrong? If you think so you are ignorant of the law (and common sense). Once any person lays a hand on another in a threatening way that is an assault. It is a crime. Depending on the degree of threat and harm it can be a felony or a misdemeanor. You are totally justified in defending yourself. Today’s public indoctrinators forget this. That’s why they erroneously expel kids who defend themselves against bullies.
The school Principle was a gay man who solicited sex from young men in the bathrooms at Riverside Park. He immediately said I was “terminated.” The Tulsa Police officer advised against that explaining the law and thereupon put the habeus grabbus on the bully, arrested him for assault and took him straight to jail wearing chrome bracelets. Unlike today, I was universally applauded for ensuring the safety of the real victim – the girl – and asked back to substitute many times.
On another occasion I was working security at a “Magnet” school located in an economically depressed, black neighborhood. “Magnet” schools then had long waiting lists of students whose parents wanted their exceptional children to get an exceptional education. I believe duty uniform was optional but I wore civilian clothes with just my duty weapon and badge on my belt. The Principle was an energetic, black man who was always cordial and supportive.
One day he told me one of his students was being targeted by some local gangbangers who were repeatedly stealing the battery out of his car in the student parking lot. The kid was Vietnamese and had been a young child when his parents escaped Vietnam on one of the thousands of floating nightmares during the evacuation. I gladly took on that mission. I drove my red, ’68 Camaro into the school parking lot and parked my car three cars down from his. I closed one of the gates allowing only one way to enter and depart the parking lot. If anybody came in they had to drive by me. No sooner had I slid the seat back and tilted the rear view mirror down so I could slouch down and see behind me that I spied a low-rider, Chevy, two-door, Impala trolling down the street packed with black gangbangers eyeballing the parking lot. I stared at the rear view mirror and cracked my door open a touch. I waited. . . and waited. I peeped above the window sill of my door and saw they had parked one car over from me and were doing something to the kid’s car. I slowly eased the door open and slid onto my hands and knees. When I got to the back of the adjacent car I quickly rose up, pointed my weapon at them and told them to “Freeze!” The drive and the front passenger were still in the car but one gangbanger was kneeling down prying the hubcaps off the front right tire of the Vietnamese kid’s car. Rather than freezing, the driver leaned forward and pulled his seat forward so the thief could jump into the back seat. He sat upright looking straight at me out the rear window as my front sight was aimed right between his bushy eyebrows. I obviously wasn’t going to kill them for stealing hubcaps.
As they drove off I was looking at their license plate when something moved out of the corner of my left eye. I whirled ninety degrees to my left bringing the muzzle of my duty weapon within an inch of the nose of a black male, 6’2″ 240lbs with a tire iron raised over his head to bash my brains in. He did decide to freeze and dropped the tire iron whereupon I withdrew my duty weapon to my right side, grabbed him by his arm and placed his chest over the trunk of the kid’s car. When I told him to put his hands behind his back he rose up so I jammed the muzzle of my duty weapon so hard against his skull right behind his left ear it made the upper receiver group move back half an inch. I could feel his gluteus maximus tighten against my stomach. He was a big dude. As I was putting the handcuffs on him he raised up again and I conducted a footsweep, putting him chest first onto the pavement where I succeeded in cuffing him. That’s when I became cognizant of an audience of construction workers dangling their legs off an adjacent roof having lunch whistling and applauding me.
On-duty Tulsa police officers arrived shortly to take the maggot to jail informing me the guy was just paroled two weeks ago for several felonies and was in all likelihood going right back to prison. A few days later, investigators from the TPD asked me to come in for a photo line-up of the bushy eyebrowed maggot. He was the last one in the pile. He also was sent back to prison for parole violation.
In addition, there were arrests of non-student, trespassing gangbangers trying to beat up students, drug dealers, etc.. It was the best of being a cop because a school is a microcosm of a community – but with the universal appreciation of both students and faculty (something you rarely got out on the street). I reveled in being greeted as “Officer Mike!” I felt I had accomplished my mission when students, faculty and the Principle ensured I was invited to their graduation.
Fast forward to my four kids’ high school in Sierra Vista Arizona, 2000-2009. The female School “Resource” Officer was unarmed (in so many ways) and reduced to being a “counselor” more than a security officer. No enforcement authority = No respect / No fear / No obedience = Chaos. The school board has since defunded that position – with the consequences (despite the denials) reflecting it. She was so disgusted with the lack of control over the students by the administration she predicted public education would cease to exist within ten years.
If only that were true – at least as it exists today.
