ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law Monday hoping to prevent future school shootings like the one that killed two students and two teachers on Sept. 4. Appalachie High School Northeast of Atlanta.
Richard Aspinwall, father of one of the murdered teachers, Ricky Aspinwall, was called “a great day to improve safety” on Monday.
“I don’t want anyone else to go through this,” Aspinwall told reporters. You see it happening all over the country. It has to stop. It has to stop in some way. ”
But like most new laws, it’s important to practice the word.
“Everyone has to work together,” said Rep. Holt Persian, a Winder Republican who represented Appalachie High School and sponsored the bill, after the signing ceremony. He said it includes not only schools and local law enforcement agencies, but also Georgia’s child welfare, mental health and emergency management agencies.
House Bill 268 was partially promoted among many who said the Barrow County school system did not have a full picture of the warning signs displayed by the accused in the fatal shooting. School officials never realised it. Jackson County Sheriff’s Deputies interviewed Colt Gray In May 2023, after the FBI passed along tips that Gray might have posted a shooting threat online.
The new law requires police agencies to report to the school when officers learn that a child is threatening the death or injury of someone at the school. It also requires prompt transfer of records when students enter new schools, create at least one new position to coordinate mental health care for each student in each of Georgia’s 180 school districts, and set up an anonymous reporting system throughout the state.
Public schools must provide wearable panic buttons to their employees, and once a year, they must submit an electronic map of their campus to local, state and federal agencies.
The law also defaults to adult prosecutors if children ages 13 to 16 are charged with school terrorist acts, aggravated gun attacks, or attempted murder.
However, this measure only required a reduced version Student Tracking Database It was once the heart of the bill, but after raising fear that the enemy could become a permanent blacklist of students. Instead, Georgia’s Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security was directed to create a database of students who found the investigation threatened violence or committed crimes at schools. The law directs Gemma to create rules about when the name is included and how someone can petition them to be removed. But lawmakers didn’t particularly make money appropriate to GEMA for what they call the “emergency warning system.”
Barrow County Sheriff Judd Smith called the scale a “good starting line,” but the agreed cooperation would move forward.
“Unless you communicate, you don’t always get the job done,” Smith said. “And you need to understand what lane they are. Law enforcement has lanes, education has lanes, and then there are taxpayers who have lanes.”
Passing the law was emotional for many, including the Persinger and the Aspinwall family, who cried on the day they received their final approval.
“It’s part of healing, but you’re not really healing,” Aspinwall said. “You always have memories of you. It always hurts.”
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