WATCH: Prof falsely tells social work students that school officers are 'not prevention' for shootings

In light of the recent Nashville school shooting, a professor from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Odis Johnson, said on the University of Utah’s (UU) College of Social Work YouTube channel that “school officers are not prevention” for school shootings. 

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Odis Johnson, a professor of sociology, gave a Mar. 31 presentation on what he called the “hardening” of schools through “securitization” and how this has affected children. He proposed that school security measures are ineffective and need to be changed or eliminated. 

His alternative “gun violence prevention policy” included ending “gun-free school exemptions for teachers and school staff.” His reasoning was that teachers and staff would not have the training of a “law enforcement officer.” 

Later, he stated, with respect to the shooting at Nashville, “[S]chool officers are not prevention. We still lost six lives that day … Some people may say we need school officers to do what they did, but I will respond, saying, ‘We still lost lives and school officers are not stopping the rise year over year in injury and death.’”

“So therefore, we need to try something new, something different,” Johnson concluded. 

Johnson’s conclusions are in conflict with an analysis performed by the Department of Justice in 2020 on twelve different case studies. The analysis found that heightened security or school resource officers were often able to prevent or stop a crime before it happened.

In one instance, “an 18-year-old entered a local high school in the Midwest after school hours. During one of these surveillance trips he was seen on video surveillance holding an electronic device with which he appeared to be filming the hallways and intersections.” 

The student had been planning and mapping a shooting and bomb threat. Officers got the evidence they needed from security cameras and were able to stop the crime before it happened. 

Johnson has also been critical of cameras and other surveillance measures in schools.

In another instance cited in the DOJ report, a principal found herself at point-blank range with an active shooter. A school resource officer “pulled her gun and stood between the perpetrator and the principal” which led to officers mortally wounding the gunman. Nobody else was hurt. 

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Yet, in another video that focused on last year’s Uvalde shooting, streamed on Mar. 23, Johnson called the use of school resource officers “ineffective” at deterring school shootings. 

To provide evidence for this, he stated, “School resource officers have been put in schools in greater numbers” while there have been greater numbers of shootings. He did not mention any other factors contributing to this trend. 

The relevant parties in this story have been contacted for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.