The Fontana Unified School District's 14 police officers were recently armed with semi-automatic rifles, drawing sharp criticism from some in the Southern California community who oppose having such weapons on campuses.
The Colt 6940 model rifles, which cost about $1,000 each, will be kept in on-campus safes and only be used in "extreme emergency cases" like the Newtown, Conn., massacre, said Supt. Cali Olsen-Binks.
The district purchased the rifles in October and they arrived in December, before the tragedy in Newtown, where a gunman killed 26 people—20 of them children—at an elementary school. The shooting sparked a debate on whether armed school guards could prevent these types of tragedies.
Read the full Los Angeles Times story.