A current bill in the state of New Jersey proposes the idea of placing retired police officers in New Jersey public schools. These officers would be armed with a police-grade weapon, will not have yet reached the age of 65, and would have their pension temporarily suspended, as they would continue to be paid for this work. This bill is being raised in light of some of the violence in schools and other public venues in the last several years, as well as the violence that occurs in some of New Jersey’s inner-city schools.

While Parsippany has never had an acute problem with a violent individual in a school, nor is it considered an unsafe neighborhood, a survey was conducted by hyper-local newspaper “The Parsippany Patch” regarding this issue. When asked if they would be in support of a bill that would place armed, retired police officers in New Jersey public schools, Parsippany residents were largely either in favor, or unsure. Only 14% of residents said they were against the bill, while 43% each where either in favor of the bill or unsure. This is a large amount of “unsure” results, and thus may skew the results toward looking as if Parsippany is strongly in favor of the bill. However, the “unsure” people make up such a large percentage of the total vote, that it is too early to assume a consensus of any sort.

I decided to narrow the results by polling New Jersey educators on their feelings regarding the bill. When posed with the same question in a series of short interviews, Parsippany teachers gave similar results to the general population, although with vastly less “unsure” responses. 65% were in favor of the bill, while 28% were against it, and only 7% were unsure of how they wished to respond. Considering these are professionals who are in schools on a daily basis, their responses may hold more authority than that of the general population.

I expected there to be some sort of logic regarding who was in support of armed police officers in school buildings, and who was opposed to this idea. I expected older teachers to respond differently than younger teachers, or female teachers differently than male teachers, for example. This was not true, and the responses across any standard measurable demographic were varied. The only notable trend is that all elementary teachers surveyed did answer in support of the bill, but it is also noteworthy that correlation does not equal causation, and that it cannot be determined why these educators answered the way that they did.

All that can be determined is that at least in Parsippany, the bill to place armed, retired police officers in public schools certainly has some support, though a definitive opinion of either teachers or the general population cannot be reached at this time.