STORY TIME, MOTHERFUCKERS.
Okay, so I went to high school in the "prestigious" Little Rock Central High School. You know, the one that crows incessantly about how its historic because it was the last to integrate, but let's just totally gloss over that because MUH LITTLE ROCK NINE.
The reality was that the place was barely better than a festering shitheap. This school was, to put it bluntly, the last-choice school for kids that couldn't get into better ones or whose parents couldn't afford to drive them to a better one. Now, you might not associate Little Rock, Arkansas with gang problems, but lemme tell ya...our 'hoods might not be as populous as those in, say, south-central LA, but it gets plenty fucking violent. As in "I hear gunshots about 2-3 times a month" violent. Given that Central High was the last choice for everyone, it attracted a lot of those kinds of people. Ya know, gangbangers.
Fights were frequent enough that our school had not only security guards armed with batons and mace, but police officers armed with actual, loaded firearms. Yes, "officers," as in more than one. We never had a problem with gun violence during my time there, but let's just say that not all the incidences were just fistfights.
This was in a school that had random scans using portable metal detectors ("wands") and a "clear or mesh" rule for backpacks.
The kicker? The school was a literal haven for low-grade drug dealers and there were several spots around the school where, if one were so inclined, they could get a handy or a beej for a few dollars. I knew several of these dealers, and they sold everything from weed to oxycontin. Several students came into class absolutely
reeking of weed. None of this was ever punished unless the actual, armed police officers caught you.
The school wasn't safer or cleaner because of all the searches and armed politzei and security cameras everywhere but the classrooms and shitters. It was a seedy, disgusting shithole with a gleaming facade. A gilded turd.