Zero Tolerance?

Yesterday my husband and I watched a documentary titled Zero Tolerance
Link to the movie -https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Tolerance-Sara-Gibbings/dp/B00NIPB968

In any case it is a documentary about just what the title says. Zero Tolerance. Having police officers and gang units in schools to stop violence, pre determined discipline despite context.. etc. The documentary shows the good and bad of it. Including kids getting in trouble for pretending a pencil is a gun or selling candy etc.

Anyway, it also shows clips from Sandy Hook and Columbine. Basically making the assumption that one of the reasons that Columbine and Sandy hook happened was because there was no Zero Tolerance policy in place.....or at least not one that was working. Now there is a ton more to this and you can find more info on google or here [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] but what do you guys think of this? Do you think this could or would have helped things?

I know from personal experience in my own highschool we did not have this. The school I went to did have a uniformed police officer that would visit but never stayed. Punishments seemed to be on a kid to kid and offense to offense basis. Columbine did have Neil there all the time to oversee things but it seems punishments were dolled out the way my school did it. I do not agree with zero tolerance for what it is but I cannot help but wonder if Columbine had set this in place before E&D were there if things would have changed....like lets say there is a zero tolerance for bullying... a kid who bullies no matter who it is gets the setforth punishment. Could that have helped? Now that makes me think of Dylan falling asleep in class for example. That would also have a punishment and we all know how he internally dealt with that kind of thing.

I don't know. A running theme for Eric and Dylan seemed to be the inequality they feel they received. I don't think this in any way makes things equal but who knows.

Because of Columbine that this started being implemented in the first place. Same goes for like you said the bullying and its follow-ups for it. Unfortunately Columbine had to happen for schools to be ten times stricter and not the free place it was before 2000s.

Columbine changed the whole culture around bullying, mental health, violence prevention, etc. There are kids today who have never heard of Columbine but they are shaped by it every time they attend an anti-bullying seminar or get suspended for having a letter opener in their pocket.

Part of it is schools trying to avoid lawsuits or their insurance declining claims because they didn't have the proper safeguards in place.