Suburban Schools Reject Metal Detectors

The argument against metal detectors in schools starts with the bottleneck they can create at the front entrance, which might have to accommodate 2,000 students in 15 minutes. Then there's the matter of staffing the machine over the course of the school day.

School officials note that the typical high school may have 15 to 20 entrances, none of which can be locked from the inside because of fire regulations.

The Montgomery County school system, like many of its suburban neighbors, has introduced surveillance cameras and police officers in many of its schools over the past decade. Visitors no longer get past the front office without signing in. Schools now conduct four emergency drills a year. There are no metal detectors.

"Number one, they're expensive. Number two, once you put them in, they have to be manned all the time. And number three, we have so many entrances to our schools, it makes it very difficult to do," said Robert Hellmuth, director of school safety and security in Montgomery. "The point is that I'm not sure how effective they are."

Perhaps most important, metal detectors are not particularly popular among parents and students in Montgomery.

Virgie Barnes, an Einstein parent, said she sees quite enough of metal detectors at her job in the federal government. Put magnetometers at school, she said, and "you would have a line of kids out to 7-Eleven."

Freddy Mancilla, 18, the school's student government president, said his classmates "would cope with it" if metal detectors were introduced at Einstein, "but I don't think that's the first option anyone's asking for."

Suburban school officials are quick to point out that metal detectors have not completely stemmed the flow of weapons into D.C. schools. In February 2004, James Richardson, 17, was shot and killed near the cafeteria of Ballou Senior High School, a campus equipped with both metal detectors and X-ray machines. The shooter sneaked the gun in through a side door.

Audrey Williams, a D.C. schools spokeswoman, said the technology "drastically reduces the chances of weapons getting inside a school building." The only drawback, she said, is the backup caused "when a large number of students come to school five minutes before the bell rings."

Metal detectors have yielded both success and failure. In February 2004, a D.C. police officer caught two students who were trying to sneak guns into Wilson High School after they were seen conspicuously avoiding the metal detector. But in September 2003, twin brothers were arrested only after they had brought a loaded handgun into the Dunbar High School cafeteria, apparently smuggling it in through a side door.

Reports of guns in schools remain comparatively rare in the region. Prince George's has confiscated 10 firearms since fall 2006. Montgomery school officials report only one firearm in that span apart from the three recovered last week. The Anne Arundel, Howard and Loudoun school systems report one gun each.

School officials greet such reports with skepticism. Federal law requires school systems to report firearm violations as a condition of funding, but the incidents are mostly self-reported.

The most recent report on guns in Maryland schools, for example, shows no gun confiscated in a Howard County school in the 2006-07 academic year, even though a student was arrested with a gun in June 2007 at Hammond High School. Patti Caplan, spokeswoman for the Howard school system, said the incident might have been omitted because it happened so late in the school year.