Watching the Detectives

Today a boy was shot and wounded by a cop after he tried to bring a gun to school.
 
The boy fled when he set the metal detector off, and the cop shot the boy during the pursuit. The kid is still alive
 
The story got me wondering just exactly when metal detectors became the norm at high school, when they became necessary. I did a quick check and found that they were first introduced in 1994. Apparently, after the detectors and other measures were instituted, violent deaths decreased by 50 percent in U.S. high schools.
 
My high school introduced these measures the year after I left—2002. That year, they had a shooting scare. This wasn’t the first either– that one came when I still attended my old alma mater.
 
Someone left a message on the boy’s room wall saying that he would kill everyone the next day. One of the suspects was in my gym class. For some reason, this kid always talked to me. That day, he told me he didn’t do it.
 
I remember he had also recently burned stars onto the backs of his hands with red-hot cookie cutters.
 
He didn’t do it. But someone did. Maybe the guilty party didn’t mean it. Maybe it was a joke or an idle threat. Regardless, I stayed home the next day, because for every idle threat, there’s a kid who sets off metal detectors.