Liability law hampering use of school marshals

Last spring, the Washington state Legislature created a work group to make recommendations on how to intervene and prevent mass shootings. The group includes police and prosecutors, educators, the ACLU and family members of mass school shooting victims. The work group is scheduled to make recommendations to the Legislature by the end of the year.

Last spring, the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs discovered that lawmakers in Olympia had budgeted $50,000 to convene the work group to recommend how to respond to and prevent mass school shootings. Steve Strachan, speaking for the WASPC, stated, “I think that if we have a thoughtful conversation about mental health, about red flags, about privacy, I think we can make real progress, so I’m optimistic that we can do something substantive and I think our Legislature is interested in that.”

The group met with the Spokane sheriff in August. Washington State Patrol Capt. Jeff Otis and Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich gave a detailed description of the law enforcement response at Freeman High School. Knezovich called for armed marshals to supplement resource officers already posted in many of Spokane’s schools. “The concept of a school marshal is basically armed security. One of the biggest stumbling blocks I see in that is going to be the school’s liability insurance,” Knezovich said.

The sheriff explained that he was happy to do the training, but stated that issues regarding the “liability piece” had to be overcome. The problem is that the risk-management pools funded by Washington school districts employ actuaries who foresee less financial risk in letting the carnage continue than they see from the liability presented by armed school personnel.

Insurance is more expensive when districts arm school employees because Washington law confers immunity on policy decisions (even poor policy decisions) while imposing liability on decisions having to do with the act of deploying deadly force. The sheriff, on the other hand, has been quietly meeting with Spokane County school districts to discuss how to create real solutions to stop the kind of shootings that seem to have paralyzed most policymakers.

The public has heard policymakers making thoughtful conversation about mental health, about red flags and about privacy after every mass shooting going back at least to the Columbine shootings. The importance of recognizing red flags is hard to debate. But the Parkland shootings showed that good intentions alone are ineffective.

The sheriff understands that deadly force must be deployed when the carnage starts and seconds count. School personnel embedded as school employees who are motivated to get the training and qualify like police officers can make a positive difference. Assigning school resource officers to each school is good. It is also expensive and may not be as effective as highly trained school personnel who look and work in the schools just like other school employees.

There is little likelihood that the work group’s recommendations will result in the school marshal program that the sheriff and others have proposed. But that does not mean that local school districts’ hands are tied. Federal and Washington state law authorizes schools to deploy anyone whom a school board appoints to protect the schools. Many schools in Eastern Washington already have armed employees ready to protect the schools.

The Legislature should empower school districts by creating incentives for districts to require high levels of professional training. In return for meeting the high standards, the Legislature should limit liability for school districts.

The Washington State Sheriff’s Association is the organization that can best recommend and implement training standards outlined by the Legislature. The sheriffs understand that the most effective first responders are the people who will be in the schools when an active shooter initiates an attack. Every second spent waiting for the police to arrive represents precious lives that will be lost.

This is not the time to be agonizing over privacy issues. The most important privacy issue is how the identity of the school marshals will be kept confidential. There are no perfect solutions. But perfect solutions should never get in the way of making necessary choices even when the choices are difficult.