Don’t mess with Marlboro Township.
The leafy, well-heeled New Jersey suburb will station a permanent armed cop in each of its nine schools starting Jan. 2.
It’s apparently the first district nationwide bent on packing heat in every schoolhouse since madman Adam Lanza gunned down 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14.
“We’ve made a collective decision as a town that we need armed security in each of our schools,” Mayor Jonathan Hornik told The Post.
“With this new evil, you can’t just sit there and hope that it doesn’t happen in your town. We must protect our kids.”
Angel Chevrestt
BIG MAN ON CAMPUS: A police officer stands outside Frank Defino Central School in Marlboro, NJ.
The mayor and other town officials had approved the initiative before the chief of the National Rifle Association ignited a firestorm on Friday by calling for armed guards for schools.
Besides putting a cop in each of its schools — one kindergarten, five elementary, two middle and one high school — Marlboro will consider fortifying entrances with steel doors and bulletproof glass and installing surveillance cameras “all over” to feed to the police department, Hornik said.
Cost won’t stand in the way of “state-of-the-art” safety, he added.
“This isn’t a luxury item. This is a necessity, based on what we saw happen in Connecticut,” said Hornik, a Democrat who supports an assault-weapons ban and stricter gun control.
The 40,000-resident Monmouth County town, home to many former Brooklynites and Staten Islanders, has taken groundbreaking safety measures before. In March 2001, it became one of the first towns in the nation to ban cellphone use while driving.
No other school districts in New York, New Jersey or Connecticut have decided to use guns to guard against an assault, officials said.
Read more http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/jersey_town_adopts_schoolhouse_glocks_ID5tknLmS1oOuWbD62d51K
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