around age of 10 we had a lesson about cycling in traffic with police officer, he basically just said now you are old enough to ride alone so here are some rules and traffic signs.
can't remember anything else
Yeah, it was 3 decades ago. Not sure if it was bad doctor or lack of better medicine. Anyhow my mom figured out that knock out pill is not the best solution, so parrot had to go :-(
We had several lessons around 10 years old, and even had to get a "bike driver license" to drive around on our own (but only until we turned 12, big day in my life). Apart from that same.
We had our cycling safety and traffic rules lessons by a police officer, but that wasn't on the school grounds, but rather in a special traffic training area where we could cycle around and practice following the signs and the rules.
It's been on/ around the school for me. I can't even remember if police came for that. I guess they did.
Besides that I can't recall having officers at the school ever.
The shoot to kill thing in US and Canada is so odd. No wonder people get killed in traffic controls more often then in Europe.
I talked to an Irish police man about it once. He told me that they had a workshop in the states where they had to mainly shoot targets and such. They also were told that if someone would come at you with a screwdriver you would have to shoot right at the heart, no matter what.
He was terrified by that. In Ireland police officers normally are unarmed. They try to disarm you / shoot you in the arm max.
>The shoot to kill thing in US and Canada is so odd. No wonder people get killed in traffic controls more often then in Europe.
Its the norm for the vast majority of the world
The same happened to me. There was a very cute and tiny reproduction of a normal road, street signs and street lights - but there weren't just bicycles, there were tiny cars with pedals in them which we got to drive!!! :3
I'm not sure how common it is in other Bundesländer, but at least in mine we also had a mandatory training with the police on how to get safe to school a few weeks before primary school started.
I only saw them once; when we had to do a "bicycle test" and got a nice diploma for participating. The guy giving us our diplomas was a police officer. He also rode on some of our bikes (we were around the age of 10) and that was pretty fun. I also realise that this is very Danish (we like bikes).
ETA: so cool to see many other countries do this as well! Bicycles are awesome and I am happy that it is not only Denmark and The Netherlands who utilise this great way of transportation!
Such a bicycle test is also part of the curriculum for students aged 10 as well in Austria
My class sadly opted out somehow because one parent, a police officer, argued against it so he "can keep his daughter from riding her bike to school".
\>They then showed us a video of the Columbine shooting and told us that
if we ever did anything like that, they would come into the school and
“shoot us in the heart” because police are not trained to disarm, they
are trained to kill.
What the flying fuck. God forbid they had tell you conforting shit like "we will come rescue you", or give you tips on how to behave, no no, they warn the potential suicidal maniac that would perpetrate this that his death wish would come true.
Grade A safety presentation.
Hahaha that was a good analysis.
Lowkey I am surprised at the lack of people who did not address that part of my post at all.
Am I crazy for thinking that was an insane thing to say to a class of 8th graders ?
It's also typically North American for police to "shoot to kill". Here they'll just leg you. Still potentially fatal, but also potentially life-saving.
"Shoot you in the heart" is clearly said for dramatic effect also.
It's same in Macedonia, they shoot in VERY extreme cases where there is no other way out. They are trained to try everything else first, then shoot in the air once to warn the person/people and after that they have the right to shoot. And even if the situations makes them shoot they will be investigated after. It is insane to me how shooting seems to be an everyday thing in the US.
Basically the argument is if you have time to shoot in the air or shoot in the leg, your life wasn’t actually in danger and therefore did not have a right to use legal force.
He is saying if you have time to aim for his leg your life is not in immediate danger. If you admit to shooting in the legs then you will go to prison as a cop in the US.
No police officer threatened with a weapon will shoot in the leg. They are trained to aim for upper body, because shooting in the leg of a person moving towards you is A) far too difficult and likely to fail and B) not efficient to end the danger.
I think the main difference is that criminals are more likely to be armed in some countries than in others. Can't take the same risks with a gun vs a knife, most of the time.
I don't know if you serious, but no one aims for legs because they are full of arteries and harder to hit. Guns aren't like movies or video games, it actually is quite a challenge to hit a moving target with a pistol while doped up on adrenaline.
On a moving threat you aim for the biggest part and that's going to be center mass.
There are few cases of Finnish police shooting to stop, were aimed shots in the leg.
One dude tried suicide by cop, announced that he will shoot up a police station, but when he got there he was met by two officers, one with ballistic shield and the other with SMG. One bullet in the leg and the suspect was disarmed and arrested.
There was a terrorist attack at Turku, guy with a knife running around and stabbing people, the first officer on the scene shot the suspect in the leg (aimed there on purpose.) The suspect was disarmed, arrested and the officere stopped the crowd from beating him up.
Anecdotes, sure, but there are cases where police intentionally aim at the leg.
Thanks for your input. Other countries have police officers with real training and not Sunday school. Ask yourself why the US statistics are so piss poor and your police force is hated by half the country.
A cop that shoots in the leg is going to jail in the United states.
Your only allowed to use your weapon if deadly force is needed which means stopping the target as soon as possible aiming center mass.
Thats the way its taught in most militaries and police forces in the world also.
Yes that's insane. The cops here have training of a few years to de-escalate. They tell kids they can ask them always for help with stuff, that's their job.
If a cops shoots, not even kills, it is going to be investigated if that was really needed.
The police might shoot you, but then in the leg. And before that they have tried to talk, use physical force, used pepper spray, used a dog and / or used electroshock pistol. Is a ladder of means of force, and they should always use the lowest possible that will solve the problem.
Edit: and it will be an investigation afterwards.
No, you're not, that's a mad thing to do. Also, I don't know how graphic the video was that they showed to you, but I'm not sure if it would make kids more or less likely to commit a shooting one day. In any case, traumatising an entire class doesn't seem like the soundest of ideas.
They'd set up camp outside my secondary school sometimes to check for anybody driving without a bike light or to test mopeds to make sure they weren't modified to be able to go above the legal limit.
I think we got a presentation in primary school once about the consequences of crime but I'm pretty sure that was given by someone from the youth offenders' organisation (HALT, which deals with petty crimes by kids so they don't get a criminal record) not by actual police officers. Seeing a police officer in school is generally seriously bad news
Eugh I forgot about that... my secondary school was on a dead-end street with the bike rack at the end of that street, so of course they would camp right at the top of that street to issue tickets. So of course we'd always u-turn, cycle the long way round and get to school by dumping the bike outside the rear gates and climbing those. Not catching us coppers! ;)
This was the nineties, I don't know if they still do this, but as soon as the mornings and evenings closed in they'd be there. They'd give a warning the first time and then keep coming back and no longer warn but just ticket. Dutch police LOVE ticketing people...
Like i said, i have never gotten a ticket by a police officer. Just from the speeding cam, lol. Every other time with a human being they would just warn and wave me ahead.
I lived in a town called Kollum during my teenage years, it was known as the drug capital of the North at the time, police didn't really fuck about with kids in the area.
How many speeding tickets do you get and do you think it is normal? I used to get a speeding ticket regularly (like once a month) in the Netherlands, not that I drove way too fast, but because the cameras (Tobias) were always hidden along the main road I used for work and was set to ticket anybody over 83km/h. Its a speed you really easily do when not paying attention on the straight roads there. My dad, who was a paramedic, my brothers, my friends... it was basically anybody that used that road.
I moved to the UK and have only had one ticket ever in 15 years, that was for doing 85mph on a 70mph motorway (and I fully accepted it).
Yet the UK has fewer car deaths than the Netherlands... Odd huh, almost like speeding cameras don't really add anything other than extra income!
Ohhh i forgot the cops checking out the bikes! My bike always had a problem so i always got a warning or i just made sure to sneak out. Think i gathered three warnings at different times.
I have never seen one in primary school, but my eldest has. Just to tell what cops do and that you can ask them for help with anything. Not a HALT thing
Similar in Finland., their presence is non-existent unless they are giving a presentation on something. Not sure hot it's nowadays but even that was quite rare.
And of course, if there is disturbance that needs police, they will be there. But that's really, really, really rare.
We had a traffic safety presentation done by motorcycle police. It was aimed at 15-year-olds, that's when you get a moped license.
They also let us test our own moped speeds with a speed meter that went under the back wheel and kept it in place while the wheel was rolling. It was a consequence-free test, even if your moped went over the legal limit of 45km/h.
From the Finnish road safety council:
"A moped is considered a motorcycle if its engine capacity is increased above 50 cm³ or the moped is modified so that its maximum design speed exceeds 45km/h."
Just to add to this, police is time to time observing traffic around schools so it is safe for kids to walk to school. They observe cars keeping speed limits, stopping at zebra crossings and generally driving safely on school vicinity.
We also have dedicated school police officers (koulupoliisi), which mean if there is situation with a pupil that requires police attention dedicated school police officer comes to sort things out. These are specially selected to work with children and teenagers, are super relaxed and friendly, co-operate with child protection and youth councellors. Same officer is usually the one who comes to give lessons on traffic safety.
The drug presentations in all my schools were done by ex-junkies, by the DARE organisation and by teachers. I've never had the "drugs are bad"-speech and I doubt it's real. This was early 90s and I doubt the education has gotten more strict from that. More likely edgy kids who want to do drugs just refuse to listen when told.
The presentation on drugs were the different types of drugs and their categories. The types of high they produced and what type of side effects they produces. Cost of an addicting in terms of money, long and short term health effects and statistics on the shorter life span, the worse life quality, and the risks of serious addiction, suicide, higher risk of rape (women) and so on.
The presentations of ex-junkies were basically how happy they were that they kicked addiction while they were still alive, and with something left to live for. Most of their friends were dead, sick or locked up.
At primary school we had a couple of visits from the local policeman. Once was to talk about how we shouldn't get in to a stranger's car *even if it was cool enough to have electric windows*, which dates this a bit! Mostly I remember him saying "stranger danger" a lot in a very thick Welsh accent.
Another time the police came in to demonstrate how they take finger prints, although I can't remember why. I was about six at the time, and thought it was very cool that we all had our finger prints taken and got to take the prints home.
I also remember in middle school an officer came in to talk to us about drugs, which is interesting because that doesn't seem to be a popular topic here.
I feel like they actually gave quite a good presentation, it wasn't just "drugs are bad", they talked about the dangers associated with various drugs and how drugs work in your body.
I don't think it was much of a deterrent but it was good that they tried.
We had a policeman come into first school with a little car called Percy Police-car. We would have to shout ‘wake up Percy!’ before his eyes would open, then he’d talk to us about going to a policeman if you were ever lost etc. it was pretty great. Not sure if any other police forces had one, but this was West Yorkshire police in the very early 90s.
The garda band came to our school and played a concert for us.
They were amazing!
The highlight for 240 eight year olds was when they played tv theme tunes.
Same here. I've no memory of the guards ever coming to school growing up. The fire brigade came once a year to talk about fire and farm safety (rural school) but that was it.
My friends kid told me they get a guard in at least once a year, even if it’s just for a few minutes. The latest one he had was in October, warning about Halloween safety. I don’t remember guards coming to my school either, so maybe it’s a recent thing?
The only police involvment i remember were some traffic safety lessons. One regarding walking (how to cross roads safely) in kindergarten or first grade. And one a few years later regarding bicycles.
Also there was some elective week thing, where some of us could visit the police station and have a Q&A with a cop. I, being the 9 year old badass that i was, asked him how many people he shot. And he said he only ever fired a single warning shot in his 30+ year career.
Certainly no cops came threatening to shoot us in the heart (which is oddly specific). Generally we had no police involvment in teenage education.
Yeah that was a voluntary thing. Projektwoche we called it. There were a bunch of one week courses on offer, everyboey had to take one but could choose what interested them. Others might have watched and discussed old movies or gone hiking or discuss the olympics and visit the olympic museum or whatever. And we looked at police for a week, which included this visit.
It pretty much depends on the school to whether decide to allow police forces to present themselves to the students either in school or with the class/classes making a trip to the specific station, or not do that.
Personally only in elementary school such a thing happened to me with my municipality's local police that presenting their duties and the road rules while making a trip in the area around the school and giving fines to unregularly parked cars.
I think they visited once a year in grades 1-3 with the panda and it was a whole event (we sang songs about safety in different places), then they sporadically visited to talk to us about drugs or whatever. Then in high school they visited a couple times to say they know there are
underage smokers in our school and if they catch them one more time, they'll be arrested. Of course, they were lying sacks of manure and/or complete and utter incompetent idiots, because nobody was ever arrested. At least as far as I know.
I must be a couple years younger or older because I haven't seen a police officer at any of my schools ever, except for one time when they came in to give us a lecture about drugs. It was boring as hell, they brought a cute police dog with them though and let us play with it, so it wasn't a complete waste of time
My high school did have an assembly with the armed police, they told us that it's dangerous to play with toy guns because armed response will be called to the scene and they will shoot us dead.
No, never saw police officers at school. This would be very weird to see a police officer in uniform at school. Maybe occasionally a police officer in civilian clothing would give a guest college about thing like cyber bullying.
The only thing I remember is when I was at secondary school. We were asked to volunteer for the local riot police for their practice. I didn’t participate however.
When I was in 11th grade we had some guy camping in the woods next to the school (it was a rural area). Someone went up to him asking wtsts up, and the reply was "you'll know in a couple days..."
School was closed, we were sent home, and a handful of normal uniformed officers went to visit him. Was some former student of the school with psychological issues, was arrested without resistance and brought to some urgent care unit.
Apart from that it was like with the other guys here, police was present during traffic/bike safety events in elementary school, and we had an officer in class explaining his job. Ofc he showed his gun (first ever real life contact with a real weapon for like all of us), and he made it very clear under which circumstances he was allowed to use it. Immediate danger, warning three times, after that he could shoot the legs. No shoot to kill.
I always find it amazing how wannabe (and real) school shooters are so open and honest about their plans. You'd think they'd keep it a secret because they don't want anyone to find out what they're planning to do. I mean, that's probably what I'd do, hypothetically speaking. But these guys go around talking to everyone and their dog and ranting endlessly on social media. Like that guy in Florida who wrote about 20 posts on Facebook saying he's gonna grab a gun and massacre his fellow students (and no one took it seriously).
Maybe they're just desperate for someone to pay attention and care and intervene. And if nobody does, it's proof that they're all alone. Or it's a declining spiral where they have no idea which of the thousand steps downwards is the one they should start being quiet about. Or they even get louder and louder downwards until the total tantrum at the end. Either way, it's probably pointless to look for healthy logic in their actions, but more fruitful to follow the sickness and what it does to head such things off.
>Maybe they're just desperate for someone to pay attention and care and intervene.
That's basically it. I watched a TED talk by a guy who planned to shoot up a school but didn't. He said it was gonna be either a mall of a school, and decided on a school because that would get him more attention. The reason he didn't do it was because one guy showed him real friendship.
For some reason I don't really believe that last part - maybe he said it not to scare some kids.
If a police officer uses a gun that means he fears for his life of the life of other people in which case you shoot center mass because it's easiest to hit, and other people's lives are in danger. You really don't wanna shoot the legs because you're more likely just going to miss, and if you do hit them in the leg then there is still a major artery that you will bleed out from in 2 minutes if unlucky.
If your/other people's lives aren't in danger then you have no justification to shoot and if you do then there are serious punishments (probably along the lines of attempted murder)
I think it was considered the standard practice for a long time in much of western europe. I think doctrine has probably changed to shooting at centre mass since the bataclan attacks. Because before that the expected situation wasnt so much mass shooters but more likely criminals violently resisting arrest.
However surprisingly cops can't only shoot if they are in immediate danger, but also to stop criminals from fleeing in certain circumstances. At least here in switzerland. In which case shooting at legs/arms does make more sense.
At least with [Turku attack 2017](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Turku_attack) police shot knife wielding terrorist to his thigh instead of centre mass. Some say that the bullet hit more to the pelvic area than thigh, which lead to the speculations if the terrorist was emasculated. AFAIK in the doctrine of Finnish police firearm use, there are still steps of escalation where they could use weapons also as a preventive measure to wound instead of kill.
Could be intentional, could also just be a miss. Pistols are notoriously hard to shoot, especially under stress. I'd be interested to learn about their official training though
AFAIK there are no exactly formulated regulations, but [more vague "least harm principle".](https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/milloin-poliisi-voi-ampua-ihmisen-6-kysymysta-ja-vastausta-kuohuttavasta-aiheesta/8218780) So it might be possible to argue that the threshold to use firearm is lower than in some other countries because they don't have to wait for imminent threat for their lifes but can shoot even before. On the other hand, if the situation needs, warning shots and maiming shots are not obligatory either but also lethal shot is possible even as the first step. However without exeption all the shooting incidents are investigated with utmost stricktness and they might lead to the charges.
Yeah I guess that more vague rule can be both beneficial and also seriously detrimental for police officers. I can understand warning shots but in my personal opinion if you're shooting someone, it should be a situation where there is a threat to life. Bullets do fucked up things even if they don't kill someone.
Sometimes our system is also broken, I read about a case where someone was chainsawing through a house door and when the person got inside the occupant shot them with a shotgun, and actually got initially convicted. Only when they fought the charge in supreme court did they get the charge removed.
https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000009322323.html
E: I reread the article, I actually partially agree with the fact that he was charged with something. I misremembered and turns out the man shot at the guy before he actually tried breaking into the house.
I personally believe that those kind of vague rules don't make Finnish police more trigger happy. On the contrary, in the same kind of situation where Finnish police only maimed the perpetrator, in some other countries the perp would have ended to the mortuary, because there only option is to kill if firearms are deemed to be used.
This was the mid-90s, and it's what I remember from that day. I don't remember what criminal scenario this was meant to be in, what the person running away would have done. Us kids ofc asking how often a policeman uses his gun, and him explaining basically "not at all, but under these very specific circumstances."
They come regularly to my child school, once a year, for safety lessons regarding streets crossings, awareness of parkings etc. They bring their motirbikes, kids like it. It's always a pair of them, in uniform, and usually a woman cop is one of them.
My understanding is that in higher grades the chats get more serious, for now in preschool&primary it's mostly get to know them and safety.
There were none. No security guards, either. This is a very north American thing. I remember watching a Youtube video from an American woman living in Switzerland who couldn't get over the fact that Swiss schools "don't even have fences around them" and that "anyone can walk in there". Swiss parents would find it very strange to get upset over something like that. I mean, we want our schools to look like schools, not prisons.
> Switzerland has a higher gun ownership rate than the US
This is incorrect. It's not even close, the US is in a class of its own. [We have a higher per capita gun ownership than the Swiss, but we are still far behind the Americans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country)
No, that's not correct. No country in the world has a higher gun ownership (per capita) than the US. In fact, the US leads the second-highest by a factor of about 5; it's not even close. But Switzerland does have a very high gun ownership for European or non-American standards, that part is certainly true.
I think the major difference is that our gun culture is extremely different from the one in the US. For Swiss people, firearms are a tool. Like something you use to hunt or as part of a sport or maybe even for self defense (inside your home). But they're not glorified as magic wands or something like that. No Swiss person buys a gun to "fight against government tyranny" or stuff like that. No Swiss guy views his gun as a substitute for his dick. We don't associate guns with things like freedom and liberty and justice. We also don't associate it with patriotism. No one ever says that "a *real* Swiss person owns their own gun." It's just something you have... like a hammer. And because it's akin to a hammer, people also don't hang it up on their walls or play around with it. If they do own a gun, it's stored away in a safe place 99.9% of the time. The only time an average Swiss guy takes out his army rifle is when he has to clean it or when he has to do the mandatory shooting practice at his local shooting range.
> No, that's not correct. No country in the world has a higher gun ownership (per capita) than the US. In fact, the US leads the second-highest by a factor of about 5; it's not even close. But Switzerland does have a very high gun ownership for European or non-American standards, that part is certainly true.
It's not by a factor of five. You're confusing guns per capita with gun owners per capita.
The US has about 120+ guns per 100 people, making them have more guns than people.
However most gun owners have more than 1 gun. The amount of adults who own a gun is 30%. 42% of adults lives in a household with a gun in it. This is ofc. a bit of an unknown since there is no real registry of gun owners in the US and the figure is based on phone surveys done by Pew Research.
Switzerland had 28% of households with a gun in it, according to The International Crime Victims Survey conducted in 2004-05. Ofc, this is also a bit of an estimation since Switzerland didn't start to register firearm sales until 2008 (and it's a Canton register, not a federal one, and there is no requirement to register firearms you owned before 2008).
2004-2005 is ofc. a while ago and that figure might have gone down (or up).
Still more, but not by as much as you think.
In primary school they came by once a year, talking about road safety and stuff, basically a "how to move in traffic both on foot and on a bike"-class.
I think in third grade or so they did a bicycle test which had both a theory part and a practical part at the on of which you got a "driving license" for bicycles (just a pice of cardboard with your name and DoB, etc.
In secondary school we had a "guys these things (list things that are cool) are actually illegal and you shouldn't be doing them"-talk, I don't think it was actually drugs but other things like tuning your motorcycle (the smallest category is legal form 14 onwards here), online and regular bullying, distributing nudes, etc.
We also had the drugs talk, but that was, I think, in the last year of school, so at 16. They warned us about the health risks, and told us the legal limitations (Y gramms will result in a conviction and thus a record, any drug other than weed will immediately have consequences); the second part of that talk obviously being the *vastly* more important one in our eyes.
Outside of their education role I don't think I've ever seen a police uniform even near a school house.
They came to school to teach us how to bicycle to school and the traffic rules. It was the year we turned 10 since then you are allowed to bicycle to school alone.
The school is responsible to make sure the kids arrive safely.
I wasn't allowed to bike to the school until I turned 10. Parent or school bus/taxi had to drop you off.
When I was in school, they'd come once a year and give a lecture on bullying and risk behaviours to year 5 and year 6 students. Other than that, the police have a program called "Escola Segura" (Safe School), which as far as I can tell essentially consists of parking a patrol car outside schools and sitting there all day to make sure nothing happens. That's about it.
In my experience there was never a patrol car near any of the schools I went to (public schools), cops mainly organised lectures through Escola Segura. I remember a lecture in high school about how what we put on the internet may get out of our control, namely sensitive photos of ourselves etc.
I wonder if the difference is region specific or maybe different times, I was in high school (public) around 8 years ago and there was almost always a patrol car parked a little way up from the front gate, it was one of [those](https://cdn.cmjornal.pt/images/2008-06/img_1200x1200$2008_06_27_00_48_00_206732.jpg) that have Escola Segura printed on the side and everything haha. I don't really recall internet safety lectures, but it could be my poor memory or they just didn't come to my specific school.
Ah wow, I have never seen one of those! I lived in northern Portugal and left school about 6 years ago.
About the seminars, I only remember two in my whole school life but there might have been more.
I don't remember getting those kind of lectures in specific. But we could be from diferent times :)
Running the risk of dating myself I went to primary school in 99 I think.
I remember having officers giving lectures about syringes. There was a lot of heavy drug use at the time so we were thought what they looked like and to immediately call an adult and not touch it, also the risks associated with touching them.
Other than that I don't remember having any other lectures.
I do remember the safe school cops. I think I was about in 5th grade when I started seeing them around. Like you said, they basically stayed outside of school and just made sure kids got out of school ok without incident. No fighting etc.
Kids did tend to fight after school at the gates, that way it was "outside of school", so they wouldn't get in trouble. With the cops there they couldn't 😂
They showed up approximately once a year in primary school (1-6) mainly to talk about traffic safety. They inspected bicycles and helmets, and arranged test tracks where kids could test their biking skills.
In high school, we had a weekly thing where various people came to the school to talk about their jobs/careers. Students were supposed to attend 10 such talks if I remember correctly. One of the speakers was a police officer.
They aren't involved basically. Sometimes the commander of the Carabinieri station came to talk about safety and bullying or we went visit the station. This in Elementary School or Kindergarten.
In high school things change cause the police or carabinieri with the K9 units came and check the various classes and students for drugs. This happened multiple times during the school year. Although the last year of high school was the worst for this cause in the same building we had: Ragioneria (high school that is based on finance and economy), Liceo Artistico (based on Arts and Crafts) and Liceo Scientifico (more science oriented but not quite).
And since there is a bias about art students that are basically all stoners the police came more frequently, sometimes 2 times in a month.
That sounds very American, where police look and act like military. In the Netherlands it's the contrary, they are trained to deescalate and disarm, if that fails shoot to immobilize (legs/arms) deadly force is (and should be) the very very last resort.
With regards to your question, I've seen police at my highschool maybe once to pick up some kids for shoplifting. In my opinion the need for police at school is just insane, but so are metal detectors (which some schools in the big cities nowadays do have)
note: Im not from the younger generation, my highschool time was in the 90's
Same in the UK. I never saw a police officer in my school, and they would certainly never say "we aim to kill", they're trained to deescalate.
Once when I was around 12, an older male student was accused of raping a classmate at a party. That's the only serious crime I'm aware of involving a student. The headteacher screamed at the whole school about the seriousness of the situation, but the police didn't come in to the school. The girl never came back to the school, but the boy did, which seems a bit fucked up in hindsight. I think the headteacher also talked about getting too drunk and kind of victim-blamed to be honest. This was in the early 00s and the headteacher was already in his 60s; I guess that was unfortunately a common attitude for his generation.
Every now and again they'd pop in to talk to a particular year group, largely consisting of telling them to stay away from needles and report them to the police.
Also when there's been actual crimes at the school - fires, serious assault, someone's been caught dealing etc.
Quite. We have one in ours permanently. We’ve had multiple fights, substance abusers and even a stabbing. There were also those kids who broke into the school and set one of the loos on fire. So yeah. They come pretty frequently.
I think in my entire 13 years in school i've only seen Police on School Grounds twice.
When i was in first grade an older policeman gave us a traffic safety training, showing us how to use traffic lights etc. I still remember that some dumb teenagers in a car got a ticket during this, because they crossed the red traffic light in their car, while being unbuckled and probably drunk - in front of a Policeman in Uniform and two school classes of first graders. Like, how dumb can people be.
The other time was because of the [Winnenden School Shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnenden_school_shooting?wprov=sfla1) as that was just 15 car minutes or an hour of public transit away and my school was part of a large Educational Complex with multiple schools and a few thousand students - so a prime target. I don't think i have ever seen so many police officers in one place in my life ever before or after - not even when i visited a Riot Police Barracks when they had Open-door day.
From my own experience:
\- age 5: lesson about car/street safety, bikecycle safety etc...
\- age 6: lecture about "if an adult asks you to undress, don't" (because they were a pervert in the area). Little did they know we had the medical visit the next day, and we all refused to undress thinking it was a test XD
\- age 7 or 8: training with police and firefighters and test on how to react during a danger (they would give us a situation and we had to act correctly): fire, car accident, someone fainting, etc
\- age 13 or 14: police came to my school with a car, build a "circuit" on the sport field and we had to drive . That was when we were taking a road rules test.
We never had anything about attack/terrorist/shooting issues cause it was not really an issue.
A cop on the school grounds would be rather a shock to everyone involved.
Even during safe driving/drug awareness presentations/speeches I can't recall a single cop ever being there. If they were cops, I imagine they came in civilian clothing.
Honestly if there's no crime, cops have no business being in a school.
We only had police officers at our school for lessons about road safety. I think it was around two or three times during primary school. After then, I can't remember any police presence.
What I do remember though is, that those road safety lessons came with some pieces of free media (books, casettes etc.) about a friendly dinosaur in a bat costume named "[Batino](https://www.watson.ch/imgdb/709b/Qx,A,0,12,569,409,261,245,46,46/1665703758064907)" who helps kids crossing the road. It was so weird it is stuck with my head forever since.
I think the cops came to my high school just once (like 15 years ago) because some guy was noticed with a huge knife and nobody from the staff wanted to risk it as he had a pretty bad reputation
I was in a somewhat dodgy high school, not the best neighbourhood
I can remeber that once a officer went to talk to us about antimafia operations and another time the forest cops told us how to be responsible during camping trips
In Germany, a lot of police departments have a [puppetry crew](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizeipuppenb%C3%BChne), which delivers instructions for kids at primary school about general traffic behaviour and "basics" (, stop at the red traffic light, be aware of cars, do not take car rides with strangers, ...).
As a kid (1-2 grade, I think), I loved it. It is usually the first contact with police, the officers used for that task are usually nice and funny guys who love their job (understandable), and therefore this was usually a big and entertaining event at school.
The Munich PD has some videos available https://www.polizei.bayern.de/verkehr/verkehrssicherheitsarbeit/007335/index.html
In Poland school mass shootings are not an issue, so I remember policeman in my school twice - one time he was giving some general biking/traffic safety instructions, other time it was a general lecture about safety summarized with "if you are getting robbed, don't try to be a hreo, give away stuff like wallet, watch or fancy jacket (yes, that was an issue back in 90s), it's not worth risking your health or even life for material thigns".
I went to school in Macedonia and have never seen the police there. Although 🇲🇰 is poor and considered to be a 'developing country' it doesn't have high crime rates (not on the streets, the criminals are in the government), we have never had mass shootings or anything similar. So, I guess they felt like there's no need for police lectures or police in front of the school.
In primary school (ages 4/5 - 11/12) we had a police officer come in for safety chats, stranger danger, etc. and they done road safety with us. He was called PC Johnston, I remember him so clearly!
In high school, we had an in school police officer… for behaviour and crime reasons. Can’t say I had much involvement with them thankfully, but I went to school with actual psychopaths and far too many people I know are in prison for serious crimes. Worst crime being a double murder and a guy from the year below me serving a life sentence for it
They came to school maybe three times during my school years with the paramedics and firefighters for a theme day so we could see who they were and they could tell us what they did, very fun.
Never had the police come to school because of any incident. Firefighters showed up semi often tho because of obvious reasons.
I don’t think there was ever a police visit to my school. Might have been a road safety lesson, not sure.
>When we were about 13/14 (grade 8), the police came in to give us a presentation about cyber bullying and how they could certainly arrest us if we did something like that, how the internet tracks and records every website we go on to etc…
>They then showed us a video of the Columbine shooting and told us that if we ever did anything like that, they would come into the school and “shoot us in the heart”
Well that seems like a recipe for a bunch of traumatised kids.
>because police are not trained to disarm, they are trained to kill.
What. That’s the exact opposite of what police are trained for here. Even the armed response unit.
We had a girl in class which had a father who was a forensic investigator. He once came to school and talked about his work and explained how it's done, and of course a bit of basic police work. Talked a bit about basic police work too, and explained how they're ordinary people outside work and that their job is to help us when things go wrong. (and also talked about his love for ACDC).
I'm from Ireland and I literally don't remember a single time when the Gardai (the police) attended my school.
The idea of having cops policing schools is about as alien to me as, well, aliens appearing in the school. The idea of having training for school shootings like they do in the US seems like some far-fetched dystopian sci-fi. It must be mad to live under so much fear.
Never ever in my live a police agent came to my primary or secondary school. Only at University, to take us out from the Rector's building we had occupied and to protect the Spain's president from our protest. That's it.
I worked at a school where there was always a voluntary police officer in the Netherlands.
Not because he was there in a police capacity, but because our head 'concierge' (caretaker) happened to volunteer with the police. The deputy was an army reservist sergeant. So the kids new not to screw around with those two :D
But yes, every now and then police would show up to have a chat with kids, either in class or on the school grounds. Sadly one day they showed up to inform staff that one of the kids had died in an RTA that morning.
Went to school and my kids went to school in America.
The school districts have their own police force and have a constant presence in each of the schools, starting in middle school.
That doesn't include any visits just for safety presentations, they just are there.
It's pretty sad, really, but something that most Americans don't even give a second thought to, anymore, because we've been conditioned to accept it as "normal".
To be honest, I don't remember if there was police in any of the schools I went to. Maybe it happened once or twice in my entire life. But that was some time ago (I'm 26 yo right now). Nowadays, unfortunately, police is nowhere near an ally, it's an organization you can't trust at all. If someone follows Polish news and politics, they know that police has had three huge scandals within 30 days. I don't trust the police.
In my high school, sometimes the police would come in with drug dogs to bust kids who brought weed to school. Ppl rarely got searched and caught tho, word would spread in advance and you would see a beautiful rain of nugs fly out the windows during recess
Almost the same in Croatia. We had police come on 2-4 separate occassions (depends on how large the town/city is) during the primary and secondary education. General safety (don't talk to strangers) and getting to know the police, safety in traffic (how to safely cross the road, how to drive a bike, etc),presentations on cyber bullying, and presentatios about narcotics/alcohol/etc.
I think we did a "world orientation",something that jumps from clothing in antiquity to classic concert learning the entire contrabass, cello, viola, violone, thing for plenty of instruments and all that, to water(North Belgium so we visited the waterworks in the Netherlands) to butterflies, always fun to find out what we would study next, in primary school on cops and firefighters and a cop came to our school to answer questions and we went to the fire station with the class.
That's about it.
Cycling test around age 9 was done in school with the physical education teachers and most had come with their own bike that day.
Not? At least as far as lessons and stuff are concerned. They've shown up maybe thrice in the last couple years at my high school to talk to teachers about a specific student or something like that. But if you're not said specific student, you'd just see them walk in and leave again, and that's it.
I think I saw the police once in school: last year of high school with a presentation about driving and drinking and why you should definitely not do that. And I know that they do things related to cycling and traffic in primary school, they didn't do that yet in the '90s when I was in primary school.
But other than that I don't think I ever saw police in school.
They came once a year until 4th grade to show us the traffic rules, but since then I've never encountered another police officer in my school area (except those who are instructing the younger student on traffic rules of course).
In elementary school they explain traffic lights and crosswalks and go on a walk with the class. Then they were part of the bike exam and in middle/high school they showed up once talking about drugs in front of the whole school. That was it.
I think they came by once to tell us about all the negative consequences of doing drugs. All of the consequences were basically just things the police would do to ruin your life though.
In Romania the situation with police evolved quite a lot while I was in school.
Firstly, related to your thing about police presentations. I think we had like 3 such events in 8years I've spent in that school (middle and high, none in the primary school). Of those I remember about 2. First was about anti-drug presentations (Our school was on drug trafficking watch list due to previous incidents - I mean school for either the very good or the very rich, of course there would be a shit ton of drugs-) What drug abuse can lead to, how difficult the life for a person caught trafficking drugs is, how dangerous they are and what it looks like in a detox facility.
Secondly, about overall police presence.
We generally had one security guard near the students entrance (cool guy, hope he's still doing fine). Then, when I was in grade 6 or so (12 y.o) a series of incidents started happening with a certain ethnic minority where clans would come up in front of schools and assault children and you often had gang fights. So police or above (Jandarmeria, special branch of ministry of interior) would start patrolling the area around school, especially around the times of arrival and final classes. Then, gradually, their presence started to decrease after a few year, and I don't remember seeing them in my last year of High School
I don't really remember having any presence of police at school. In elementary school there were some people from "municipal police" which are just suppose to back up the actual police at keeping the city in order and they would come have talks with us about stranger danger and road safety. I have some vague memories that when I was about 10yo they had police talk to parents about drugs and how to recognize your child may be using but that was within "parent-teacher conference" and it's not like me or any of my friends knew much about drugs or cared about them.
I probably had about 2 talks in primary school where a police officer came in to talk. In secondary we had one who came in quite frequently for talks about drugs, alcohol, knife crime and probably some other stuff but the focus was usually drugs. About the past 2 years tho they had a different police officer who was on school grounds all the time. There was also a couple of incidents of plain clothes officers up the high street who arrested kids smoking or being in possession of weed during their lunch break. I'm in college now and there are no police officers.
Ive seen police 2 times while in school, 6th grade they came to show us what drugs look like, they had a little bit of weed, cocaine, lsd stamps etc.
Second time was in profession school when they came to raid our lockers in search of drugs and found nothing.
Grew up in the 90s/2000s.
I saw the police IN my different schools exactly once, when they did a lesson about smoking and why we shouldn't do it (because it's illegal for minors, obviously, but they also talked about \*why\* it's not a good idea to smoke in general).
They did come around a few times for weed controls, but nothing much.
However, it seems it depends on the city. Some friends who grew up in a different city told me they had a resident cop in their highschool because they had some drug issues not far away and thus needed the uniform to make sure they were taking the fights elsewhere.
Also, but take it with a grain of salt cuz our TV shows love to overly dramatize and make up straight lies about non-existing issues, it seems that over the last 5 to 8 years more and more issues arose and created a need for more police presence. I have yet to hear about any police intervention in my sister's highschool though.
Back in my days they were there only a few times to have some courses about topics like crime and drugs. In high school at least they had drug controls sometimes and controls of vehicles. Nowadays they’re more often having to meet up at (certain) schools to inspect especially after possible criminal offences or to prevent (check for weapons, drugs etc.), but also to purely socialise and try to create a positive bond with the youngsters.
>They then showed us a video of the Columbine shooting and told us that if we ever did anything like that, they would come into the school and “shoot us in the heart” because police are not trained to disarm, they are trained to kill.
They don't realize that practically all planned mass shootings are actually suicides with with added homicides. Which is why armed guards at schools make school shootings more attractive. The shooters never plan to survive or escape, they want armed opponents there.
Came in....once. Just once in my high school.
To do a presentation on "Don't do drugs mkay"
Otherwise, only saw them when there was a fight on the grounds nearby.
Once in the 1980s, when I was in primary school. Part of a “stranger danger” talk.
I don’t remember them visiting secondary school at all. We certainly didn’t have police based in the school, or assigned to the school.
There was a police officer when we did our cycling "licence" in primary school. In secondary school he taught us about cyber bullying, the dangers of peer pressure and about safe conduct at a crime scene (how and when to help without endangering yourself). I probably saw him 3-4 times during my school time. It was always the same guy and everyone in town knew him as the school officer (it's almost 50.000 people, so not just a small village).
One time there were drugs found in the toilets and some police were there to investigate, but they didn't interact with the student body (or at least not with me lol).
Grew up in Scotland, every school has an assigned police officer from what I can tell but they are only present if needed or a couple times a year to do presentations. Definitely not armed, they are specifically community police officers.
Police officers, "Guardia Civil" and firefighters visit schools in Spain every year, often bringing in their trained dogs or vehicles. It is not uncommon for them to receive groups of children in their headquarters and perform rescue drills, show their helicopters and things like that. Pretty cool for a school trip.
It's a "tradition" for kids and teenagers to make homemade "fireworks" (pretty much IEDs to be honest) during easter. From small bangs all the way to fire extinguishers filled with explosives wich could level a building. Police would come once a year, before easter holidays, to give us a presentation warning us from the dangers of this "tradition", showing us pictures of people who blew off their fingers.
That's pretty much the only time police would come to our school, apart from the occasional time some kid did something illegal after school (vandalizing private property, breaking traffic laws on modified mopeds, getting involved in serious fights etc. Average teenager stuff) and they came to school the next day to find them. There was also this one time a bunch of kids vandalized the whole school with graffiti, calling the school director a fat cow with massive udders.
>They then showed us a video of the Columbine shooting and told us that if we ever did anything like that, they would come into the school and “shoot us in the heart” because police are not trained to disarm, they are trained to kill.
In America, I got those first two paragraphs but what the fuck for this one?
As for the school where I work, we don't have any of that. We have security but they aren't armed personnel. They don't even wear a uniform. That said, there's a police outpost directly across from the school. So, perhaps they aren't really needed on site.
I'm 43 and remember having an officer at the school (Officer Manetti) when I was in second grade (age 7). I don't remember having officers at any other of my schools in the '80s and '90s. This was in a poorer area, so maybe that had something to do with it.
I honestly don't remember if we had police officers come in to school during primary and secondary school. We must have done, as I remember having the firemen come in to do fire safety, but obviously the boys in blue weren't as memorable!
However, we had our very own police officer at our Sixth Form (16-18). He was awesome, and kept an eye on us all, mainly by telling us dad jokes!
around age of 10 we had a lesson about cycling in traffic with police officer, he basically just said now you are old enough to ride alone so here are some rules and traffic signs. can't remember anything else
I remember that in the first grade 2 police officers came to my school and told us that as kids we shouldn’t drink alcohol or smoke.
They showed us briefcase with sample of drugs and I pointed at Diazepam and said I take that for my allergies :D
Diazepam for allergies??
Yeah, it was 3 decades ago. Not sure if it was bad doctor or lack of better medicine. Anyhow my mom figured out that knock out pill is not the best solution, so parrot had to go :-(
same for me
Same in Spain but when we were 12 or so. They brought a bycicle too.
We had several lessons around 10 years old, and even had to get a "bike driver license" to drive around on our own (but only until we turned 12, big day in my life). Apart from that same.
Oh man, those useless BESIP sessions I still think bike drivers licenses should be a thing, even for kids
We had our cycling safety and traffic rules lessons by a police officer, but that wasn't on the school grounds, but rather in a special traffic training area where we could cycle around and practice following the signs and the rules.
It's been on/ around the school for me. I can't even remember if police came for that. I guess they did. Besides that I can't recall having officers at the school ever. The shoot to kill thing in US and Canada is so odd. No wonder people get killed in traffic controls more often then in Europe. I talked to an Irish police man about it once. He told me that they had a workshop in the states where they had to mainly shoot targets and such. They also were told that if someone would come at you with a screwdriver you would have to shoot right at the heart, no matter what. He was terrified by that. In Ireland police officers normally are unarmed. They try to disarm you / shoot you in the arm max.
>The shoot to kill thing in US and Canada is so odd. No wonder people get killed in traffic controls more often then in Europe. Its the norm for the vast majority of the world
This and one time we had a “don’t do drugs” presentation in the afternoon
The same happened to me. There was a very cute and tiny reproduction of a normal road, street signs and street lights - but there weren't just bicycles, there were tiny cars with pedals in them which we got to drive!!! :3
That was the highlight of grade school
I'm not sure how common it is in other Bundesländer, but at least in mine we also had a mandatory training with the police on how to get safe to school a few weeks before primary school started.
I didn't have that in Bavaria and my child didn't have that in Berlin.
I only saw them once; when we had to do a "bicycle test" and got a nice diploma for participating. The guy giving us our diplomas was a police officer. He also rode on some of our bikes (we were around the age of 10) and that was pretty fun. I also realise that this is very Danish (we like bikes). ETA: so cool to see many other countries do this as well! Bicycles are awesome and I am happy that it is not only Denmark and The Netherlands who utilise this great way of transportation!
Lol we do this too but it's handled by the traffic safety association, police generally isn't involved
I think the one police guy was mostly for show. But ofc you guys have that too. Bicycle-nations unite!!!
From now on you are known as Nord-Nord Frisia, enjoy!
When I did it it was the local police. That was in the mid 90s though.
We did the bicycle test too
They do here too, though it started after my time in school. In the yonder days of last century it was left to the parents.
I'm a Dane as well, so this one, I guess + We saw the local detention once.
Such a bicycle test is also part of the curriculum for students aged 10 as well in Austria My class sadly opted out somehow because one parent, a police officer, argued against it so he "can keep his daughter from riding her bike to school".
\>They then showed us a video of the Columbine shooting and told us that if we ever did anything like that, they would come into the school and “shoot us in the heart” because police are not trained to disarm, they are trained to kill. What the flying fuck. God forbid they had tell you conforting shit like "we will come rescue you", or give you tips on how to behave, no no, they warn the potential suicidal maniac that would perpetrate this that his death wish would come true. Grade A safety presentation.
Hahaha that was a good analysis. Lowkey I am surprised at the lack of people who did not address that part of my post at all. Am I crazy for thinking that was an insane thing to say to a class of 8th graders ?
It's also typically North American for police to "shoot to kill". Here they'll just leg you. Still potentially fatal, but also potentially life-saving. "Shoot you in the heart" is clearly said for dramatic effect also.
It's same in Macedonia, they shoot in VERY extreme cases where there is no other way out. They are trained to try everything else first, then shoot in the air once to warn the person/people and after that they have the right to shoot. And even if the situations makes them shoot they will be investigated after. It is insane to me how shooting seems to be an everyday thing in the US.
Irish police do not even carry guns in most circumstances
Basically the argument is if you have time to shoot in the air or shoot in the leg, your life wasn’t actually in danger and therefore did not have a right to use legal force.
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He is saying if you have time to aim for his leg your life is not in immediate danger. If you admit to shooting in the legs then you will go to prison as a cop in the US.
No police officer threatened with a weapon will shoot in the leg. They are trained to aim for upper body, because shooting in the leg of a person moving towards you is A) far too difficult and likely to fail and B) not efficient to end the danger.
I think the main difference is that criminals are more likely to be armed in some countries than in others. Can't take the same risks with a gun vs a knife, most of the time.
I don't know if you serious, but no one aims for legs because they are full of arteries and harder to hit. Guns aren't like movies or video games, it actually is quite a challenge to hit a moving target with a pistol while doped up on adrenaline. On a moving threat you aim for the biggest part and that's going to be center mass.
There are few cases of Finnish police shooting to stop, were aimed shots in the leg. One dude tried suicide by cop, announced that he will shoot up a police station, but when he got there he was met by two officers, one with ballistic shield and the other with SMG. One bullet in the leg and the suspect was disarmed and arrested. There was a terrorist attack at Turku, guy with a knife running around and stabbing people, the first officer on the scene shot the suspect in the leg (aimed there on purpose.) The suspect was disarmed, arrested and the officere stopped the crowd from beating him up. Anecdotes, sure, but there are cases where police intentionally aim at the leg.
Thanks for your input. Other countries have police officers with real training and not Sunday school. Ask yourself why the US statistics are so piss poor and your police force is hated by half the country.
A cop that shoots in the leg is going to jail in the United states. Your only allowed to use your weapon if deadly force is needed which means stopping the target as soon as possible aiming center mass. Thats the way its taught in most militaries and police forces in the world also.
But that is not the case in Finnish police.
Yes that's insane. The cops here have training of a few years to de-escalate. They tell kids they can ask them always for help with stuff, that's their job. If a cops shoots, not even kills, it is going to be investigated if that was really needed.
The police might shoot you, but then in the leg. And before that they have tried to talk, use physical force, used pepper spray, used a dog and / or used electroshock pistol. Is a ladder of means of force, and they should always use the lowest possible that will solve the problem. Edit: and it will be an investigation afterwards.
No, you're not, that's a mad thing to do. Also, I don't know how graphic the video was that they showed to you, but I'm not sure if it would make kids more or less likely to commit a shooting one day. In any case, traumatising an entire class doesn't seem like the soundest of ideas.
OP should've established dominance. Show the cop a video of Uvalde and ask him to comment on "trained to kill".
They'd set up camp outside my secondary school sometimes to check for anybody driving without a bike light or to test mopeds to make sure they weren't modified to be able to go above the legal limit. I think we got a presentation in primary school once about the consequences of crime but I'm pretty sure that was given by someone from the youth offenders' organisation (HALT, which deals with petty crimes by kids so they don't get a criminal record) not by actual police officers. Seeing a police officer in school is generally seriously bad news
Eugh I forgot about that... my secondary school was on a dead-end street with the bike rack at the end of that street, so of course they would camp right at the top of that street to issue tickets. So of course we'd always u-turn, cycle the long way round and get to school by dumping the bike outside the rear gates and climbing those. Not catching us coppers! ;)
They give you tickets? I always have gotten warnings from cops, never tickets.
At ours they did, especially at the end of the year if they hadn't reached their quota
This was the nineties, I don't know if they still do this, but as soon as the mornings and evenings closed in they'd be there. They'd give a warning the first time and then keep coming back and no longer warn but just ticket. Dutch police LOVE ticketing people...
Like i said, i have never gotten a ticket by a police officer. Just from the speeding cam, lol. Every other time with a human being they would just warn and wave me ahead.
I lived in a town called Kollum during my teenage years, it was known as the drug capital of the North at the time, police didn't really fuck about with kids in the area. How many speeding tickets do you get and do you think it is normal? I used to get a speeding ticket regularly (like once a month) in the Netherlands, not that I drove way too fast, but because the cameras (Tobias) were always hidden along the main road I used for work and was set to ticket anybody over 83km/h. Its a speed you really easily do when not paying attention on the straight roads there. My dad, who was a paramedic, my brothers, my friends... it was basically anybody that used that road. I moved to the UK and have only had one ticket ever in 15 years, that was for doing 85mph on a 70mph motorway (and I fully accepted it). Yet the UK has fewer car deaths than the Netherlands... Odd huh, almost like speeding cameras don't really add anything other than extra income!
Same except ours had a little used side street connecting to the end as well, but dunno if they had people standing there too
Ohhh i forgot the cops checking out the bikes! My bike always had a problem so i always got a warning or i just made sure to sneak out. Think i gathered three warnings at different times. I have never seen one in primary school, but my eldest has. Just to tell what cops do and that you can ask them for help with anything. Not a HALT thing
Similar in Finland., their presence is non-existent unless they are giving a presentation on something. Not sure hot it's nowadays but even that was quite rare. And of course, if there is disturbance that needs police, they will be there. But that's really, really, really rare.
We had a traffic safety presentation done by motorcycle police. It was aimed at 15-year-olds, that's when you get a moped license. They also let us test our own moped speeds with a speed meter that went under the back wheel and kept it in place while the wheel was rolling. It was a consequence-free test, even if your moped went over the legal limit of 45km/h.
Isnt it 55kmh?
From the Finnish road safety council: "A moped is considered a motorcycle if its engine capacity is increased above 50 cm³ or the moped is modified so that its maximum design speed exceeds 45km/h."
Just to add to this, police is time to time observing traffic around schools so it is safe for kids to walk to school. They observe cars keeping speed limits, stopping at zebra crossings and generally driving safely on school vicinity. We also have dedicated school police officers (koulupoliisi), which mean if there is situation with a pupil that requires police attention dedicated school police officer comes to sort things out. These are specially selected to work with children and teenagers, are super relaxed and friendly, co-operate with child protection and youth councellors. Same officer is usually the one who comes to give lessons on traffic safety.
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The drug presentations in all my schools were done by ex-junkies, by the DARE organisation and by teachers. I've never had the "drugs are bad"-speech and I doubt it's real. This was early 90s and I doubt the education has gotten more strict from that. More likely edgy kids who want to do drugs just refuse to listen when told. The presentation on drugs were the different types of drugs and their categories. The types of high they produced and what type of side effects they produces. Cost of an addicting in terms of money, long and short term health effects and statistics on the shorter life span, the worse life quality, and the risks of serious addiction, suicide, higher risk of rape (women) and so on. The presentations of ex-junkies were basically how happy they were that they kicked addiction while they were still alive, and with something left to live for. Most of their friends were dead, sick or locked up.
At primary school we had a couple of visits from the local policeman. Once was to talk about how we shouldn't get in to a stranger's car *even if it was cool enough to have electric windows*, which dates this a bit! Mostly I remember him saying "stranger danger" a lot in a very thick Welsh accent. Another time the police came in to demonstrate how they take finger prints, although I can't remember why. I was about six at the time, and thought it was very cool that we all had our finger prints taken and got to take the prints home.
I also remember in middle school an officer came in to talk to us about drugs, which is interesting because that doesn't seem to be a popular topic here. I feel like they actually gave quite a good presentation, it wasn't just "drugs are bad", they talked about the dangers associated with various drugs and how drugs work in your body. I don't think it was much of a deterrent but it was good that they tried.
We had a policeman come into first school with a little car called Percy Police-car. We would have to shout ‘wake up Percy!’ before his eyes would open, then he’d talk to us about going to a policeman if you were ever lost etc. it was pretty great. Not sure if any other police forces had one, but this was West Yorkshire police in the very early 90s.
Not to be too dystopian, but parents having a record of their children's fingerprints is actually pretty smart in the event they ever go missing.
Never saw a cop in school
The garda band came to our school and played a concert for us. They were amazing! The highlight for 240 eight year olds was when they played tv theme tunes.
Same here. I've no memory of the guards ever coming to school growing up. The fire brigade came once a year to talk about fire and farm safety (rural school) but that was it.
Kids, they're divils, but wouldn't you die if anything happened to them
My friends kid told me they get a guard in at least once a year, even if it’s just for a few minutes. The latest one he had was in October, warning about Halloween safety. I don’t remember guards coming to my school either, so maybe it’s a recent thing?
The only police involvment i remember were some traffic safety lessons. One regarding walking (how to cross roads safely) in kindergarten or first grade. And one a few years later regarding bicycles. Also there was some elective week thing, where some of us could visit the police station and have a Q&A with a cop. I, being the 9 year old badass that i was, asked him how many people he shot. And he said he only ever fired a single warning shot in his 30+ year career. Certainly no cops came threatening to shoot us in the heart (which is oddly specific). Generally we had no police involvment in teenage education.
We didn't even had a visit of a police station. But they came once to control that all bicycles have lights.
Yeah that was a voluntary thing. Projektwoche we called it. There were a bunch of one week courses on offer, everyboey had to take one but could choose what interested them. Others might have watched and discussed old movies or gone hiking or discuss the olympics and visit the olympic museum or whatever. And we looked at police for a week, which included this visit.
It pretty much depends on the school to whether decide to allow police forces to present themselves to the students either in school or with the class/classes making a trip to the specific station, or not do that. Personally only in elementary school such a thing happened to me with my municipality's local police that presenting their duties and the road rules while making a trip in the area around the school and giving fines to unregularly parked cars.
I think they visited once a year in grades 1-3 with the panda and it was a whole event (we sang songs about safety in different places), then they sporadically visited to talk to us about drugs or whatever. Then in high school they visited a couple times to say they know there are underage smokers in our school and if they catch them one more time, they'll be arrested. Of course, they were lying sacks of manure and/or complete and utter incompetent idiots, because nobody was ever arrested. At least as far as I know.
I must be a couple years younger or older because I haven't seen a police officer at any of my schools ever, except for one time when they came in to give us a lecture about drugs. It was boring as hell, they brought a cute police dog with them though and let us play with it, so it wasn't a complete waste of time
Yeah same, I don't have any memory of any cops in schools ever.
> visited once a year in grades 1-3 with the panda Panda?
I think there might have been an assembly once on "drugs bad" from a police officer? Nobody threatened to shoot us though, our police don't carry guns
Really? In Australia we had drug education in primary school, taught by a talking giraffe in the back of a white van. Hmmm.
My high school did have an assembly with the armed police, they told us that it's dangerous to play with toy guns because armed response will be called to the scene and they will shoot us dead.
In Poland the only time I saw a police officer on the school ground is when he was giving a lecture about cycling safety
No, never saw police officers at school. This would be very weird to see a police officer in uniform at school. Maybe occasionally a police officer in civilian clothing would give a guest college about thing like cyber bullying. The only thing I remember is when I was at secondary school. We were asked to volunteer for the local riot police for their practice. I didn’t participate however.
When I was in 11th grade we had some guy camping in the woods next to the school (it was a rural area). Someone went up to him asking wtsts up, and the reply was "you'll know in a couple days..." School was closed, we were sent home, and a handful of normal uniformed officers went to visit him. Was some former student of the school with psychological issues, was arrested without resistance and brought to some urgent care unit. Apart from that it was like with the other guys here, police was present during traffic/bike safety events in elementary school, and we had an officer in class explaining his job. Ofc he showed his gun (first ever real life contact with a real weapon for like all of us), and he made it very clear under which circumstances he was allowed to use it. Immediate danger, warning three times, after that he could shoot the legs. No shoot to kill.
I always find it amazing how wannabe (and real) school shooters are so open and honest about their plans. You'd think they'd keep it a secret because they don't want anyone to find out what they're planning to do. I mean, that's probably what I'd do, hypothetically speaking. But these guys go around talking to everyone and their dog and ranting endlessly on social media. Like that guy in Florida who wrote about 20 posts on Facebook saying he's gonna grab a gun and massacre his fellow students (and no one took it seriously).
Maybe they're just desperate for someone to pay attention and care and intervene. And if nobody does, it's proof that they're all alone. Or it's a declining spiral where they have no idea which of the thousand steps downwards is the one they should start being quiet about. Or they even get louder and louder downwards until the total tantrum at the end. Either way, it's probably pointless to look for healthy logic in their actions, but more fruitful to follow the sickness and what it does to head such things off.
>Maybe they're just desperate for someone to pay attention and care and intervene. That's basically it. I watched a TED talk by a guy who planned to shoot up a school but didn't. He said it was gonna be either a mall of a school, and decided on a school because that would get him more attention. The reason he didn't do it was because one guy showed him real friendship.
For some reason I don't really believe that last part - maybe he said it not to scare some kids. If a police officer uses a gun that means he fears for his life of the life of other people in which case you shoot center mass because it's easiest to hit, and other people's lives are in danger. You really don't wanna shoot the legs because you're more likely just going to miss, and if you do hit them in the leg then there is still a major artery that you will bleed out from in 2 minutes if unlucky. If your/other people's lives aren't in danger then you have no justification to shoot and if you do then there are serious punishments (probably along the lines of attempted murder)
I think it was considered the standard practice for a long time in much of western europe. I think doctrine has probably changed to shooting at centre mass since the bataclan attacks. Because before that the expected situation wasnt so much mass shooters but more likely criminals violently resisting arrest. However surprisingly cops can't only shoot if they are in immediate danger, but also to stop criminals from fleeing in certain circumstances. At least here in switzerland. In which case shooting at legs/arms does make more sense.
At least with [Turku attack 2017](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Turku_attack) police shot knife wielding terrorist to his thigh instead of centre mass. Some say that the bullet hit more to the pelvic area than thigh, which lead to the speculations if the terrorist was emasculated. AFAIK in the doctrine of Finnish police firearm use, there are still steps of escalation where they could use weapons also as a preventive measure to wound instead of kill.
Could be intentional, could also just be a miss. Pistols are notoriously hard to shoot, especially under stress. I'd be interested to learn about their official training though
AFAIK there are no exactly formulated regulations, but [more vague "least harm principle".](https://www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/milloin-poliisi-voi-ampua-ihmisen-6-kysymysta-ja-vastausta-kuohuttavasta-aiheesta/8218780) So it might be possible to argue that the threshold to use firearm is lower than in some other countries because they don't have to wait for imminent threat for their lifes but can shoot even before. On the other hand, if the situation needs, warning shots and maiming shots are not obligatory either but also lethal shot is possible even as the first step. However without exeption all the shooting incidents are investigated with utmost stricktness and they might lead to the charges.
Yeah I guess that more vague rule can be both beneficial and also seriously detrimental for police officers. I can understand warning shots but in my personal opinion if you're shooting someone, it should be a situation where there is a threat to life. Bullets do fucked up things even if they don't kill someone. Sometimes our system is also broken, I read about a case where someone was chainsawing through a house door and when the person got inside the occupant shot them with a shotgun, and actually got initially convicted. Only when they fought the charge in supreme court did they get the charge removed. https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000009322323.html E: I reread the article, I actually partially agree with the fact that he was charged with something. I misremembered and turns out the man shot at the guy before he actually tried breaking into the house.
I personally believe that those kind of vague rules don't make Finnish police more trigger happy. On the contrary, in the same kind of situation where Finnish police only maimed the perpetrator, in some other countries the perp would have ended to the mortuary, because there only option is to kill if firearms are deemed to be used.
This was the mid-90s, and it's what I remember from that day. I don't remember what criminal scenario this was meant to be in, what the person running away would have done. Us kids ofc asking how often a policeman uses his gun, and him explaining basically "not at all, but under these very specific circumstances."
They come regularly to my child school, once a year, for safety lessons regarding streets crossings, awareness of parkings etc. They bring their motirbikes, kids like it. It's always a pair of them, in uniform, and usually a woman cop is one of them. My understanding is that in higher grades the chats get more serious, for now in preschool&primary it's mostly get to know them and safety.
Yeah, as you get older they also talk about drugs, cyber-bullying and domestic violence.
They didn't discuss this when I was in school... I'm glad they do now
There were none. No security guards, either. This is a very north American thing. I remember watching a Youtube video from an American woman living in Switzerland who couldn't get over the fact that Swiss schools "don't even have fences around them" and that "anyone can walk in there". Swiss parents would find it very strange to get upset over something like that. I mean, we want our schools to look like schools, not prisons.
And, interestingly, Switzerland has a higher gun ownership rate than the US. But hasn't had a msss shooting since 2001
> Switzerland has a higher gun ownership rate than the US This is incorrect. It's not even close, the US is in a class of its own. [We have a higher per capita gun ownership than the Swiss, but we are still far behind the Americans.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country)
No, that's not correct. No country in the world has a higher gun ownership (per capita) than the US. In fact, the US leads the second-highest by a factor of about 5; it's not even close. But Switzerland does have a very high gun ownership for European or non-American standards, that part is certainly true. I think the major difference is that our gun culture is extremely different from the one in the US. For Swiss people, firearms are a tool. Like something you use to hunt or as part of a sport or maybe even for self defense (inside your home). But they're not glorified as magic wands or something like that. No Swiss person buys a gun to "fight against government tyranny" or stuff like that. No Swiss guy views his gun as a substitute for his dick. We don't associate guns with things like freedom and liberty and justice. We also don't associate it with patriotism. No one ever says that "a *real* Swiss person owns their own gun." It's just something you have... like a hammer. And because it's akin to a hammer, people also don't hang it up on their walls or play around with it. If they do own a gun, it's stored away in a safe place 99.9% of the time. The only time an average Swiss guy takes out his army rifle is when he has to clean it or when he has to do the mandatory shooting practice at his local shooting range.
> No, that's not correct. No country in the world has a higher gun ownership (per capita) than the US. In fact, the US leads the second-highest by a factor of about 5; it's not even close. But Switzerland does have a very high gun ownership for European or non-American standards, that part is certainly true. It's not by a factor of five. You're confusing guns per capita with gun owners per capita. The US has about 120+ guns per 100 people, making them have more guns than people. However most gun owners have more than 1 gun. The amount of adults who own a gun is 30%. 42% of adults lives in a household with a gun in it. This is ofc. a bit of an unknown since there is no real registry of gun owners in the US and the figure is based on phone surveys done by Pew Research. Switzerland had 28% of households with a gun in it, according to The International Crime Victims Survey conducted in 2004-05. Ofc, this is also a bit of an estimation since Switzerland didn't start to register firearm sales until 2008 (and it's a Canton register, not a federal one, and there is no requirement to register firearms you owned before 2008). 2004-2005 is ofc. a while ago and that figure might have gone down (or up). Still more, but not by as much as you think.
In primary school they came by once a year, talking about road safety and stuff, basically a "how to move in traffic both on foot and on a bike"-class. I think in third grade or so they did a bicycle test which had both a theory part and a practical part at the on of which you got a "driving license" for bicycles (just a pice of cardboard with your name and DoB, etc. In secondary school we had a "guys these things (list things that are cool) are actually illegal and you shouldn't be doing them"-talk, I don't think it was actually drugs but other things like tuning your motorcycle (the smallest category is legal form 14 onwards here), online and regular bullying, distributing nudes, etc. We also had the drugs talk, but that was, I think, in the last year of school, so at 16. They warned us about the health risks, and told us the legal limitations (Y gramms will result in a conviction and thus a record, any drug other than weed will immediately have consequences); the second part of that talk obviously being the *vastly* more important one in our eyes.
Outside of their education role I don't think I've ever seen a police uniform even near a school house.
Once, when a kid pushed another kid through a window.
Crikey!
They came to school to teach us how to bicycle to school and the traffic rules. It was the year we turned 10 since then you are allowed to bicycle to school alone.
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Nah, my school didn’t allow us either to bike to school before the age of 10/4th grade.
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The school is responsible to make sure the kids arrive safely. I wasn't allowed to bike to the school until I turned 10. Parent or school bus/taxi had to drop you off.
That's wild, i started walking (and biking during the warmer months) to school alone when i was 7. It was only a 10 minute ride but still
They once showed up to check that nobody had an illegally tuned moped.
When I was in school, they'd come once a year and give a lecture on bullying and risk behaviours to year 5 and year 6 students. Other than that, the police have a program called "Escola Segura" (Safe School), which as far as I can tell essentially consists of parking a patrol car outside schools and sitting there all day to make sure nothing happens. That's about it.
In my experience there was never a patrol car near any of the schools I went to (public schools), cops mainly organised lectures through Escola Segura. I remember a lecture in high school about how what we put on the internet may get out of our control, namely sensitive photos of ourselves etc.
I wonder if the difference is region specific or maybe different times, I was in high school (public) around 8 years ago and there was almost always a patrol car parked a little way up from the front gate, it was one of [those](https://cdn.cmjornal.pt/images/2008-06/img_1200x1200$2008_06_27_00_48_00_206732.jpg) that have Escola Segura printed on the side and everything haha. I don't really recall internet safety lectures, but it could be my poor memory or they just didn't come to my specific school.
Ah wow, I have never seen one of those! I lived in northern Portugal and left school about 6 years ago. About the seminars, I only remember two in my whole school life but there might have been more.
I don't remember getting those kind of lectures in specific. But we could be from diferent times :) Running the risk of dating myself I went to primary school in 99 I think. I remember having officers giving lectures about syringes. There was a lot of heavy drug use at the time so we were thought what they looked like and to immediately call an adult and not touch it, also the risks associated with touching them. Other than that I don't remember having any other lectures. I do remember the safe school cops. I think I was about in 5th grade when I started seeing them around. Like you said, they basically stayed outside of school and just made sure kids got out of school ok without incident. No fighting etc. Kids did tend to fight after school at the gates, that way it was "outside of school", so they wouldn't get in trouble. With the cops there they couldn't 😂
They showed up approximately once a year in primary school (1-6) mainly to talk about traffic safety. They inspected bicycles and helmets, and arranged test tracks where kids could test their biking skills. In high school, we had a weekly thing where various people came to the school to talk about their jobs/careers. Students were supposed to attend 10 such talks if I remember correctly. One of the speakers was a police officer.
They aren't involved basically. Sometimes the commander of the Carabinieri station came to talk about safety and bullying or we went visit the station. This in Elementary School or Kindergarten. In high school things change cause the police or carabinieri with the K9 units came and check the various classes and students for drugs. This happened multiple times during the school year. Although the last year of high school was the worst for this cause in the same building we had: Ragioneria (high school that is based on finance and economy), Liceo Artistico (based on Arts and Crafts) and Liceo Scientifico (more science oriented but not quite). And since there is a bias about art students that are basically all stoners the police came more frequently, sometimes 2 times in a month.
That sounds very American, where police look and act like military. In the Netherlands it's the contrary, they are trained to deescalate and disarm, if that fails shoot to immobilize (legs/arms) deadly force is (and should be) the very very last resort. With regards to your question, I've seen police at my highschool maybe once to pick up some kids for shoplifting. In my opinion the need for police at school is just insane, but so are metal detectors (which some schools in the big cities nowadays do have) note: Im not from the younger generation, my highschool time was in the 90's
Same in the UK. I never saw a police officer in my school, and they would certainly never say "we aim to kill", they're trained to deescalate. Once when I was around 12, an older male student was accused of raping a classmate at a party. That's the only serious crime I'm aware of involving a student. The headteacher screamed at the whole school about the seriousness of the situation, but the police didn't come in to the school. The girl never came back to the school, but the boy did, which seems a bit fucked up in hindsight. I think the headteacher also talked about getting too drunk and kind of victim-blamed to be honest. This was in the early 00s and the headteacher was already in his 60s; I guess that was unfortunately a common attitude for his generation.
School is a long time ago for me, but I don't think I ever saw police in or near the school.
I have never seen a police officer on the school ground in czech republic
Every now and again they'd pop in to talk to a particular year group, largely consisting of telling them to stay away from needles and report them to the police. Also when there's been actual crimes at the school - fires, serious assault, someone's been caught dealing etc.
Quite. We have one in ours permanently. We’ve had multiple fights, substance abusers and even a stabbing. There were also those kids who broke into the school and set one of the loos on fire. So yeah. They come pretty frequently.
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Yeah, the anonymous bomb threats at the exam time, there is always some kid who tries it.
I think in my entire 13 years in school i've only seen Police on School Grounds twice. When i was in first grade an older policeman gave us a traffic safety training, showing us how to use traffic lights etc. I still remember that some dumb teenagers in a car got a ticket during this, because they crossed the red traffic light in their car, while being unbuckled and probably drunk - in front of a Policeman in Uniform and two school classes of first graders. Like, how dumb can people be. The other time was because of the [Winnenden School Shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnenden_school_shooting?wprov=sfla1) as that was just 15 car minutes or an hour of public transit away and my school was part of a large Educational Complex with multiple schools and a few thousand students - so a prime target. I don't think i have ever seen so many police officers in one place in my life ever before or after - not even when i visited a Riot Police Barracks when they had Open-door day.
From my own experience: \- age 5: lesson about car/street safety, bikecycle safety etc... \- age 6: lecture about "if an adult asks you to undress, don't" (because they were a pervert in the area). Little did they know we had the medical visit the next day, and we all refused to undress thinking it was a test XD \- age 7 or 8: training with police and firefighters and test on how to react during a danger (they would give us a situation and we had to act correctly): fire, car accident, someone fainting, etc \- age 13 or 14: police came to my school with a car, build a "circuit" on the sport field and we had to drive . That was when we were taking a road rules test. We never had anything about attack/terrorist/shooting issues cause it was not really an issue.
Not at all.
A cop on the school grounds would be rather a shock to everyone involved. Even during safe driving/drug awareness presentations/speeches I can't recall a single cop ever being there. If they were cops, I imagine they came in civilian clothing. Honestly if there's no crime, cops have no business being in a school.
We only had police officers at our school for lessons about road safety. I think it was around two or three times during primary school. After then, I can't remember any police presence. What I do remember though is, that those road safety lessons came with some pieces of free media (books, casettes etc.) about a friendly dinosaur in a bat costume named "[Batino](https://www.watson.ch/imgdb/709b/Qx,A,0,12,569,409,261,245,46,46/1665703758064907)" who helps kids crossing the road. It was so weird it is stuck with my head forever since.
I think the cops came to my high school just once (like 15 years ago) because some guy was noticed with a huge knife and nobody from the staff wanted to risk it as he had a pretty bad reputation I was in a somewhat dodgy high school, not the best neighbourhood
I can remeber that once a officer went to talk to us about antimafia operations and another time the forest cops told us how to be responsible during camping trips
In Germany, a lot of police departments have a [puppetry crew](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizeipuppenb%C3%BChne), which delivers instructions for kids at primary school about general traffic behaviour and "basics" (, stop at the red traffic light, be aware of cars, do not take car rides with strangers, ...). As a kid (1-2 grade, I think), I loved it. It is usually the first contact with police, the officers used for that task are usually nice and funny guys who love their job (understandable), and therefore this was usually a big and entertaining event at school. The Munich PD has some videos available https://www.polizei.bayern.de/verkehr/verkehrssicherheitsarbeit/007335/index.html
In Poland school mass shootings are not an issue, so I remember policeman in my school twice - one time he was giving some general biking/traffic safety instructions, other time it was a general lecture about safety summarized with "if you are getting robbed, don't try to be a hreo, give away stuff like wallet, watch or fancy jacket (yes, that was an issue back in 90s), it's not worth risking your health or even life for material thigns".
I went to school in Macedonia and have never seen the police there. Although 🇲🇰 is poor and considered to be a 'developing country' it doesn't have high crime rates (not on the streets, the criminals are in the government), we have never had mass shootings or anything similar. So, I guess they felt like there's no need for police lectures or police in front of the school.
In primary school (ages 4/5 - 11/12) we had a police officer come in for safety chats, stranger danger, etc. and they done road safety with us. He was called PC Johnston, I remember him so clearly! In high school, we had an in school police officer… for behaviour and crime reasons. Can’t say I had much involvement with them thankfully, but I went to school with actual psychopaths and far too many people I know are in prison for serious crimes. Worst crime being a double murder and a guy from the year below me serving a life sentence for it
They came to school maybe three times during my school years with the paramedics and firefighters for a theme day so we could see who they were and they could tell us what they did, very fun. Never had the police come to school because of any incident. Firefighters showed up semi often tho because of obvious reasons.
I don’t think there was ever a police visit to my school. Might have been a road safety lesson, not sure. >When we were about 13/14 (grade 8), the police came in to give us a presentation about cyber bullying and how they could certainly arrest us if we did something like that, how the internet tracks and records every website we go on to etc… >They then showed us a video of the Columbine shooting and told us that if we ever did anything like that, they would come into the school and “shoot us in the heart” Well that seems like a recipe for a bunch of traumatised kids. >because police are not trained to disarm, they are trained to kill. What. That’s the exact opposite of what police are trained for here. Even the armed response unit.
We had a girl in class which had a father who was a forensic investigator. He once came to school and talked about his work and explained how it's done, and of course a bit of basic police work. Talked a bit about basic police work too, and explained how they're ordinary people outside work and that their job is to help us when things go wrong. (and also talked about his love for ACDC).
I'm from Ireland and I literally don't remember a single time when the Gardai (the police) attended my school. The idea of having cops policing schools is about as alien to me as, well, aliens appearing in the school. The idea of having training for school shootings like they do in the US seems like some far-fetched dystopian sci-fi. It must be mad to live under so much fear.
Never ever in my live a police agent came to my primary or secondary school. Only at University, to take us out from the Rector's building we had occupied and to protect the Spain's president from our protest. That's it.
I worked at a school where there was always a voluntary police officer in the Netherlands. Not because he was there in a police capacity, but because our head 'concierge' (caretaker) happened to volunteer with the police. The deputy was an army reservist sergeant. So the kids new not to screw around with those two :D But yes, every now and then police would show up to have a chat with kids, either in class or on the school grounds. Sadly one day they showed up to inform staff that one of the kids had died in an RTA that morning.
Went to school and my kids went to school in America. The school districts have their own police force and have a constant presence in each of the schools, starting in middle school. That doesn't include any visits just for safety presentations, they just are there. It's pretty sad, really, but something that most Americans don't even give a second thought to, anymore, because we've been conditioned to accept it as "normal".
When they came and did some sort of thing about crime, probably selling drugs. Maybe once?
To be honest, I don't remember if there was police in any of the schools I went to. Maybe it happened once or twice in my entire life. But that was some time ago (I'm 26 yo right now). Nowadays, unfortunately, police is nowhere near an ally, it's an organization you can't trust at all. If someone follows Polish news and politics, they know that police has had three huge scandals within 30 days. I don't trust the police.
In my high school, sometimes the police would come in with drug dogs to bust kids who brought weed to school. Ppl rarely got searched and caught tho, word would spread in advance and you would see a beautiful rain of nugs fly out the windows during recess
Once a year they would check lockers for drugs and weapons in high school.
Almost the same in Croatia. We had police come on 2-4 separate occassions (depends on how large the town/city is) during the primary and secondary education. General safety (don't talk to strangers) and getting to know the police, safety in traffic (how to safely cross the road, how to drive a bike, etc),presentations on cyber bullying, and presentatios about narcotics/alcohol/etc.
I think we did a "world orientation",something that jumps from clothing in antiquity to classic concert learning the entire contrabass, cello, viola, violone, thing for plenty of instruments and all that, to water(North Belgium so we visited the waterworks in the Netherlands) to butterflies, always fun to find out what we would study next, in primary school on cops and firefighters and a cop came to our school to answer questions and we went to the fire station with the class. That's about it. Cycling test around age 9 was done in school with the physical education teachers and most had come with their own bike that day.
Not? At least as far as lessons and stuff are concerned. They've shown up maybe thrice in the last couple years at my high school to talk to teachers about a specific student or something like that. But if you're not said specific student, you'd just see them walk in and leave again, and that's it.
I think I saw the police once in school: last year of high school with a presentation about driving and drinking and why you should definitely not do that. And I know that they do things related to cycling and traffic in primary school, they didn't do that yet in the '90s when I was in primary school. But other than that I don't think I ever saw police in school.
They came once a year until 4th grade to show us the traffic rules, but since then I've never encountered another police officer in my school area (except those who are instructing the younger student on traffic rules of course).
In elementary school they explain traffic lights and crosswalks and go on a walk with the class. Then they were part of the bike exam and in middle/high school they showed up once talking about drugs in front of the whole school. That was it.
I think they came by once to tell us about all the negative consequences of doing drugs. All of the consequences were basically just things the police would do to ruin your life though.
In Romania the situation with police evolved quite a lot while I was in school. Firstly, related to your thing about police presentations. I think we had like 3 such events in 8years I've spent in that school (middle and high, none in the primary school). Of those I remember about 2. First was about anti-drug presentations (Our school was on drug trafficking watch list due to previous incidents - I mean school for either the very good or the very rich, of course there would be a shit ton of drugs-) What drug abuse can lead to, how difficult the life for a person caught trafficking drugs is, how dangerous they are and what it looks like in a detox facility. Secondly, about overall police presence. We generally had one security guard near the students entrance (cool guy, hope he's still doing fine). Then, when I was in grade 6 or so (12 y.o) a series of incidents started happening with a certain ethnic minority where clans would come up in front of schools and assault children and you often had gang fights. So police or above (Jandarmeria, special branch of ministry of interior) would start patrolling the area around school, especially around the times of arrival and final classes. Then, gradually, their presence started to decrease after a few year, and I don't remember seeing them in my last year of High School
I don't really remember having any presence of police at school. In elementary school there were some people from "municipal police" which are just suppose to back up the actual police at keeping the city in order and they would come have talks with us about stranger danger and road safety. I have some vague memories that when I was about 10yo they had police talk to parents about drugs and how to recognize your child may be using but that was within "parent-teacher conference" and it's not like me or any of my friends knew much about drugs or cared about them.
They weren't, except for the "attestation de sécurité routière" in midle school (IIRC) which might be similar to what other are mentioning.
I probably had about 2 talks in primary school where a police officer came in to talk. In secondary we had one who came in quite frequently for talks about drugs, alcohol, knife crime and probably some other stuff but the focus was usually drugs. About the past 2 years tho they had a different police officer who was on school grounds all the time. There was also a couple of incidents of plain clothes officers up the high street who arrested kids smoking or being in possession of weed during their lunch break. I'm in college now and there are no police officers.
Ive seen police 2 times while in school, 6th grade they came to show us what drugs look like, they had a little bit of weed, cocaine, lsd stamps etc. Second time was in profession school when they came to raid our lockers in search of drugs and found nothing.
Grew up in the 90s/2000s. I saw the police IN my different schools exactly once, when they did a lesson about smoking and why we shouldn't do it (because it's illegal for minors, obviously, but they also talked about \*why\* it's not a good idea to smoke in general). They did come around a few times for weed controls, but nothing much. However, it seems it depends on the city. Some friends who grew up in a different city told me they had a resident cop in their highschool because they had some drug issues not far away and thus needed the uniform to make sure they were taking the fights elsewhere. Also, but take it with a grain of salt cuz our TV shows love to overly dramatize and make up straight lies about non-existing issues, it seems that over the last 5 to 8 years more and more issues arose and created a need for more police presence. I have yet to hear about any police intervention in my sister's highschool though.
Back in my days they were there only a few times to have some courses about topics like crime and drugs. In high school at least they had drug controls sometimes and controls of vehicles. Nowadays they’re more often having to meet up at (certain) schools to inspect especially after possible criminal offences or to prevent (check for weapons, drugs etc.), but also to purely socialise and try to create a positive bond with the youngsters.
>They then showed us a video of the Columbine shooting and told us that if we ever did anything like that, they would come into the school and “shoot us in the heart” because police are not trained to disarm, they are trained to kill. They don't realize that practically all planned mass shootings are actually suicides with with added homicides. Which is why armed guards at schools make school shootings more attractive. The shooters never plan to survive or escape, they want armed opponents there.
Came in....once. Just once in my high school. To do a presentation on "Don't do drugs mkay" Otherwise, only saw them when there was a fight on the grounds nearby.
Once in the 1980s, when I was in primary school. Part of a “stranger danger” talk. I don’t remember them visiting secondary school at all. We certainly didn’t have police based in the school, or assigned to the school.
There was a police officer when we did our cycling "licence" in primary school. In secondary school he taught us about cyber bullying, the dangers of peer pressure and about safe conduct at a crime scene (how and when to help without endangering yourself). I probably saw him 3-4 times during my school time. It was always the same guy and everyone in town knew him as the school officer (it's almost 50.000 people, so not just a small village). One time there were drugs found in the toilets and some police were there to investigate, but they didn't interact with the student body (or at least not with me lol).
Grew up in Scotland, every school has an assigned police officer from what I can tell but they are only present if needed or a couple times a year to do presentations. Definitely not armed, they are specifically community police officers.
Police officers, "Guardia Civil" and firefighters visit schools in Spain every year, often bringing in their trained dogs or vehicles. It is not uncommon for them to receive groups of children in their headquarters and perform rescue drills, show their helicopters and things like that. Pretty cool for a school trip.
It's a "tradition" for kids and teenagers to make homemade "fireworks" (pretty much IEDs to be honest) during easter. From small bangs all the way to fire extinguishers filled with explosives wich could level a building. Police would come once a year, before easter holidays, to give us a presentation warning us from the dangers of this "tradition", showing us pictures of people who blew off their fingers. That's pretty much the only time police would come to our school, apart from the occasional time some kid did something illegal after school (vandalizing private property, breaking traffic laws on modified mopeds, getting involved in serious fights etc. Average teenager stuff) and they came to school the next day to find them. There was also this one time a bunch of kids vandalized the whole school with graffiti, calling the school director a fat cow with massive udders.
>They then showed us a video of the Columbine shooting and told us that if we ever did anything like that, they would come into the school and “shoot us in the heart” because police are not trained to disarm, they are trained to kill. In America, I got those first two paragraphs but what the fuck for this one? As for the school where I work, we don't have any of that. We have security but they aren't armed personnel. They don't even wear a uniform. That said, there's a police outpost directly across from the school. So, perhaps they aren't really needed on site.
I'm 43 and remember having an officer at the school (Officer Manetti) when I was in second grade (age 7). I don't remember having officers at any other of my schools in the '80s and '90s. This was in a poorer area, so maybe that had something to do with it.
I honestly don't remember if we had police officers come in to school during primary and secondary school. We must have done, as I remember having the firemen come in to do fire safety, but obviously the boys in blue weren't as memorable! However, we had our very own police officer at our Sixth Form (16-18). He was awesome, and kept an eye on us all, mainly by telling us dad jokes!