Metal Detectors

Barney Dolt, his right arm swinging like a pendulum and a bead of sweat dangling from his nose, searched for treasure yesterday morning along the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay. Through earmuff-sized headphones, he heard his metal detector hit a tone that tells him he's found something. The 67-year-old Eldersburg resident deftly stooped to sift through the sand, and uncovered a coin. "Too many pennies," he grumbled as he tossed it into the basket strapped to his waist. But he can't complain too much - earlier that day, Dolt helped plant the coins in a cordoned-off area of the beach as big as a football field.

When Baltimore County schools Superintendent Dallas Dance announced plans this fall to create a school safety office in the aftermath of several gun incidents, some in the community assumed he would pick someone with a badge to lead the new department. Instead of choosing a police officer, Dance last month named a 36-year veteran of the system who has worked with high-risk students and led efforts to respond to emergencies in schools. Safety is something Dale Rauenzahn already handled in his previous post as the schools' executive director of student-support services — along with health, counseling, athletic and social work offices.

I have been a patient at John Hopkins, and I have been there several different times due to my own mother having surgery, and I guess to hear a bad thing can make anyone snap if it is severe enough ("Fear strikes at Hopkins," Sept. 17). We as people know that a doctor can only perform surgery. He can't make miracles happen, unless sometimes unexplained things do and can occur. I am hoping that the people who run the security there really look at all aspects of this entire day and just how it may have been avoided.

A Baltimore high school student was arrested Thursday after bringing an unloaded handgun to Carver Vocational Technical High School, school officials said. An investigation into the incident is under way, according to Edie House Foster, spokeswoman for Baltimore schools. The school did not release the student's identity or information on how he or she obtained the gun, what charges the student faces or how the incident unfolded. "The situation was under control promptly, without danger to any member of the school community," Foster said in an email.

Paul Warren Pardus did not have to evade security Thursday when he took a handgun to the eighth floor of the Nelson Building at Johns Hopkins Hospital. There was nothing to stop him from carrying a gun into the hospital, no metal detector to set off an alarm. While Hopkins has long focused on safety at its sprawling medical campus in crime-plagued East Baltimore, the hospital does not require patients or visitors to pass through metal detectors, as Americans must do now at airports, courthouses and many federal buildings.

Since a shooting in the Perry Hall High cafeteria on the first day of the school year, parent Di Ciccotelli says she believes school leaders have taken steps to show they care about protecting kids. Still, as Ciccotelli dropped her freshman son off at the school Thursday morning, she said she doubted whether the new hand-held metal detectors given to all school police officers this week would make students there any safer. "I really think that if someone wants to do harm to someone or the school itself, they're going to find a way," she said.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Everything is different this year, and it's got nothing to do with the weather.The difference is the sound you don't hear.The sound you don't hear is of bombs dropping, as once seen on your very own TV screen to dramatic commentary from Peter Arnett or Arthur "The Hunk" Kent. Where are they now?There's no war this time around. Last year, until the moment the game began, there might as well have not been a Super Bowl.Yes, it was only a year ago, the war that many people apparently already have forgotten.

A violence-filled week for Baltimore public school students - including a shooting on the grounds of Frederick Douglass High School yesterday - has ignited a community debate over whether installing metal detectors would make children any safer. State Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said she would support having metal detectors in the city's most dangerous schools, especially if parents want them. But many others said the fix would be short-sighted, expensive and ineffective. City school system officials said that, while they are willing to discuss the issue, they are not going to rush out to buy the devices immediately.

Better to be safe than sorry is always good policy when dealing with high school sports.Executive secretary Ned Sparks and the Maryland PublicSecondary Schools Athletic Association made a wise decision last weekend at the boys' state playoffs. For the first time, the MPSSAA used metal detectors at each entrance to the University of Maryland's Cole Field House.Each fan who sought entrance into the arena Thursday through Sunday raised his hands above his or her head and was checked by an MPSSAA official with a hand-held metal detector.

NEW YORK - As students approach John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, they take off their watches, unbuckle their belts and empty the change from their pockets. Couples embrace before parting to go to single-sex entrances at opposite ends of the building. There, they place their bags under scanners and walk through metal detectors. If they set those off, they are patted down. This process, similar to passenger screening at airports, is a daily ritual for the more than 4,000 students at Kennedy, where students are often late for first-period classes after standing in line for 30 minutes or more.

Since a shooting in the Perry Hall High cafeteria on the first day of the school year, parent Di Ciccotelli says she believes school leaders have taken steps to show they care about protecting kids. Still, as Ciccotelli dropped her freshman son off at the school Thursday morning, she said she doubted whether the new hand-held metal detectors given to all school police officers this week would make students there any safer. "I really think that if someone wants to do harm to someone or the school itself, they're going to find a way," she said.

This week, Baltimore County school officials started distributing hand-held metal detectors to school resource officers to help in the effort to keep weapons off campus. At the same time, Anne Arundel County made an app for students to submit tips about possible threats available on iTunes and Google Play. Parents who are worried about the rash of weapons incidents in area schools this year may be inclined to think Baltimore County is taking the more significant step, but research and recent experience suggest otherwise.

If you have been reading the Sun lately, you might think that September is National School Safety Month. "Reviewing safety plans in schools" was a recent front page headline, and a half-dozen similarly titled articles have filled the paper recently. Has there been an outbreak of running with scissors? Have students been forgetting safety goggles in wood shop? Is there an outbreak of bad crosswalk etiquette? Sadly, these stories aren't really about school safety, but instead address the troublingly difficult effort to keep guns out of the area's public schools in the aftermath of the two most recent school gun incidents.

Baltimore County parents and teachers are understandably uneasy about the safety of their children in the wake of recent back-to-back incidents involving students bringing guns to school. Last week an eighth-grader at Stemmers Run Middle School in Essex allegedly threatened his teacher and classmates with a handgun, and in August a shotgun-wielding Perry Hall High School student seriously injured another student on the first day of school. Several more threats - all, thankfully, false alarms - were made this week.

Hundreds of Perry Hall High School parents and students packed into the auditorium one week after the first day of school was marred by gunfire, demanding answers about what unfolded in the cafeteria and posing questions about student safety. From metal detectors to tighter student discipline policies and more sophisticated communication systems, dozens of parents called for action Tuesday night in the wake of the Aug. 27 shooting that left Daniel Borowy, 17, a special needs student, in critical condition.

Thanks for Susan Reimer 's excellent column on the Perry Hall High School shooter's background ("Failing Bobby," Aug. 30). This was such a tragedy. The greater tragedy is that this young boy has been charged as an adult. Our society lacks humanity when it comes to our children. Rather than more metal detectors, let's provide resources to nurture and foster all our children on their path to adulthood. Lissa Abrams

At Northern High School, the steady beep of metal detectors has become a familiar sound of the morning ritual, as common as the first bell.Weapons searches started at Northern two weeks ago, after a shooting in a hallway in which no victims or witnesses have come forward.Principal Alice Morgan Brown laments the need to subject students to the metal detectors -- they are inconvenient, but necessary.Since the searches started, "Mostly, we've confiscated knives and beepers, sometimes a metal fingernail file," Ms. Brown said.

As authorities continued to investigate the shooting at Perry Hall High School, about two dozen students gathered at a church Monday night, recounting their fears during the incident - and a reluctance to go back to school. "You just think, if it happens once, it can happen again," said senior Kyle Ritter. He said he would welcome more security on campus: "If it's going to stop all this craziness, I think it'd be a good idea. " School safety experts say that while it's understandable for some to want metal detectors and other visible signs of beefed-up security, less invasive measures usually offer the best way to keep out guns and other dangerous weapons.