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In response to mounting complaints about panhandlers, drug and gang activity and two recent shootings in Riverside parks, city officials may hire security guards – possibly armed – to patrol parks.

Officials say they don’t yet have details on the proposal, such as what it would cost, what times guards would be posted and which of the city’s 58 parks would be included. The City Council is expected to discuss and vote on the plan after receiving proposals from private security firms.

Residents have complained about homeless people camping in La Sierra Park, but the real problem is aggressive panhandling, drug deals and other crimes, said Councilman Steve Adams, who announced the plan at a community meeting Wednesday, Jan. 29.

“Everybody’s welcome in our parks,” Adams said Thursday. “Nobody’s welcome to conduct illegal activity in our parks.”

The city ultimately wants to hire more police officers, but that can take more than a year, said Adams, a retired cop.

Residents near La Sierra Park want to create a volunteer patrol, he said, but “right now the citizens didn’t feel safe doing that because we had the two shootings.”

A homeless man was found shot to death in the park in December. Also that month, a man fired at an officer trying to arrest him at Arlington Park. In response, Riverside Assistant police Chief Chris Vicino this month promised greater police presence.

PUBLIC RESPONSE

Early public response to the plan has been mixed.

Abel Lopez, who lives across from La Sierra Park, said he’s all for it, because he isn’t comfortable using the park now.

He’d like to see someone getting people out of the park at night, when it’s supposed to be closed.

An armed guard “is not going to be as positive as a police officer, but it’s still going to be positive,” Lopez said.

On Friday, some visitors to two city parks said they wouldn’t have a problem with the security guards.

Amparo Santizo, who was watching her niece play at Arlington Park, said in Spanish that she doesn’t always feel safe there.

“There’s not a lot of people (here) right now, but usually there’s a lot sleeping, (and) on drugs,” she said.

At Mount Rubidoux, Jay Ahmadi, who was finishing a run, said he sometimes sees graffiti there, and people drink and then leave behind broken glass bottles.

“It’s going to cost the taxpayers a little more (to hire guards), but better safe than sorry,” he said.

Other residents suggested installing cameras or spending more money on homeless programs. Others have questions about hiring guards.

“It’s a really enormous expense to take on and it’s something that we really need to have public discussion on,” said Scott Andrews, a member of the Riverside Neighborhood Partnership.

Gary Coffer said heavier police presence or volunteer patrols could work.

“(At) a park with kids playing, do you really want someone pulling out a handgun and shooting at somebody?” he said.

REALIGNMENT BLAMED

Councilman Mike Soubirous wondered whether unarmed guards would be effective, and if police would be able to respond if the private guards called them to make an arrest or deal with an incident.

Adams said the police department assigns cops to check on parks on their beat, but they often get called away to higher-priority calls.

Though not everyone agrees on whether the city should hire private guards, several blamed the need for more security on prison realignment, which shifted responsibility for lower-level offenders from the state to counties.

“You can’t let people out of jail early or not put them in jail at all and expect crime to go down,” Coffer said.

Assistant City Manager Belinda Graham said officials can answer questions once the city gets a response to its request for proposals, which is now being drafted.

For now, she said, “we just really want to make sure that people understand that our 58 parks at the city are safe and they can take their families there and enjoy it.

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Residents in Orland Park, Orland Hills and Homer Glen applied in January for concealed carry permits at rates higher than most of their neighbors in Cook and Will counties, according to data obtained from the Illinois State Police.

As of the last week of January, 7,843 Cook County residents had applied for permission to carry a concealed weapon, as allowed under the state law that took effect this year. That’s a rate of about 15 people per 10,000. Orland Park, by contrast, had about 40 people per 10,000 apply for a permit, and Orland Hills had 32 applications per 10,000 residents, state police data showed.

Interest by residents in Homer Glen was even higher, with 51 concealed carry applications per 10,000 residents. The rate in Will County is about 35 per 10,000, or 2,431 applications overall.

Illinois is about one month into its new law that allows residents to carry concealed guns on a permit-only basis. Illinois was the only state that still banned concealed carry until a 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the state’s ban unconstitutional in December 2012.

The new law requires 16 hours of training before residents can apply for a permit.

Interest in Homer Glen may have been buoyed by local leaders.

Will County Board member Steve Balich, R-Homer Glen, said he wrote a resolution that urged Illinois lawmakers to create a concealed carry law before they were forced to do so. Illinois lawmakers passed the new law in July 2013.

The Will County resolution, which passed on a 15-6 vote in May, was a message to state lawmakers: “We in Will County want Second Amendment rights,” Balich said.

Balich has since helped put together two concealed carry classes to help residents who want to obtain a state permit. He said about 120 people signed up for those two safety classes.

“There are a lot of people that are waiting to see what’s gonna happen,” Balich said. “I think there’s a lot of groups” putting classes together.

Balich said he applied for his concealed carry license. “I didn’t get it yet, but I applied,” he said. He plans to put together a third class in Homer Glen in late February or early March.

County Board member Ragan Freitag, R-Wilmington, attended one of the classes Balich helped assemble. She said the course focused mostly on handling the weapons and safety, and not so much on when and where to appropriately use firearms.

“They’re not promoting to go out and be offensive with this license,” Freitag said, “but to be defensive.”

Freitag, an attorney who doesn’t own a gun but says she’s looking at picking up either a 38-special or a .357 if her application is approved, said she’s looking to bring residents from her district together for a safety class similar to Balich’s.

Colleen Daley, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said the group conducted statewide polls in April and the results showed “across the board people are typically in our corner.” She said Illinois residents support the idea of measures such as universal background checks and that “the majority of people (polled) were opposed to concealed carry.”

Daley doesn’t describe the group as anti-guns, but she says she works to educate people about the potential danger and violence associated with firearms.

Four weeks after the state’s new law took effect, data showed residents had lower interest in obtaining permits in Chicago and the collar counties than in the more conservative southern counties of Illinois, which didn’t surprise Daley.

“Cook County isn’t a huge gun culture,” Daley said. “Individuals in northern Illinois have very different views than people in southern Illinois.”

Daley said her group is pushing legislators for a statewide database that would log details of every shooting.

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ATLANTA – Legislation that would have relaxed some gun restrictions is being rewritten without the controversial provisions allowing Georgians 21 years and older with concealed-weapons permits to exercise that right on college campuses.

Rep. Alan Powell, chairman of the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee, told reporters Thursday the campus-carry provision was the major sticking point in a bill that deals with multiple aspects of Georgia’s gun laws. Versions of it passed the House and Senate last year, but it ultimately stalled in the final moments of the 2013 legislative session over negotiations about the differences.

This year, legislative leaders had set the first week of the session as a deadline for the House to pass the bill. Powell said he had proposed a compromise designed to address the concerns of the University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents, which voted unanimously at its January meeting to oppose any concealed weapons on campus.

The compromise would have allowed the presidents of each college or university to decide the matter. But a letter Tuesday from the legislative counsel that provides legal advice to the General Assembly warned such an opt-out option would be unconstitutional.

“By specifically delegating authority to the presidents of public colleges and universities, and thus the Board of Regents, the bill purports to give the executive branch authority over classifying activity that would constitute a criminal offense,” wrote Assistant Legislative Counsel Julius Tolbert.

“This appears to be the exact scenario found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Georgia in ‘Sunderberg.’”

The 1975 Sunderberg case voided a law that attempted to let the State Board of Pharmacy define which specific drugs are illegal. As a result, almost yearly, the Legislature votes to update the state’s list of illicit drugs.

The main thrust of the new version of the bill will be to limit firearms access to people who have mental illness, such as someone who was found not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity. It’s a response to calls for greater restrictions on guns following Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in late 2012 in which the alleged gunman was a mental patient.

“Those are exactly the people you don’t want having a gun,” said Powell, R-Hartwell.

He admitted some ardent gun-rights advocates would oppose that provision as well.

On the other hand, among the most conservative legislators, removing the campus-carry guarantee will also be unpopular.

“When government can’t defend the people, the people have to defend themselves. We don’t want to make students sitting ducks,” Rep. Jason Spencer, R-Woodbine, said last week.

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An undercover television news story to test security in local schools triggered a lockdown Thursday at Kirkwood High, angering parents and raising questions about media ethics.

Students and teachers at the school were huddled in classrooms with the lights off for about 40 minutes Thursday afternoon after a man came into the school and asked to speak with security, then left.

The visit was one of five made by the television station to schools in the region aimed at exposing lapses in school security.

After hours of social media uproar, KSDK aired the news report at 10 p.m.

During the segment, the station showed how a staff member was unable to enter four schools unimpeded, but was able to walk right into Kirkwood High School, which had no buzzers at the door and whose entrance was not locked. The news report also questioned why the Kirkwood lockdown took place an hour after the reporter left the school building.

Even before the segment aired, KSDK used its 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. broadcasts to issue a statement standing by its reporting.

“This lockdown certainly was not the intent of our visit,” KSDK said in the statement, pointing out that the lockdown didn’t happen for an hour until after the reporter left. The station says the reporter “identified himself by name” to school officials. However, KSDK didn’t claim that he identified himself as a reporter.

“NewsChannel 5 will continue to be vigilant when it comes to the safety of our schools and your children within,” KSDK said.

Kirkwood School District spokeswoman Ginger Cayce said the incident highlighted problems in the district security Thursday. But she expressed frustration over the station’s handling of the situation.

“We learned some things from this, but we are still dismayed that a call was not given after to let us know this was a test,” Cayce said. “We could have prevented the alarm to our parents, students and staff.”

The KSDK reporter initially gave his name and cellphone number and when the Kirkwood High secretary left to get the school resource officer, the man left the office, Cayce said. Administrators became alarmed when he asked the location of a restroom, left the office, but went a different direction.

When they called his cellphone, he did not answer, but his voicemail said he was a KSDK reporter. Cayce said she tried three times to confirm with the news station that the man was actually with KSDK with no success.

“I told them ‘I’m going to have to go into lockdown if you can’t confirm that this was a test,’” she said. “When we couldn’t confirm or deny it, we had no choice.”

PANIC ENSUES

In the hours after the incident, some parents said that while they did not like the disruption, they were more concerned about possible lapses in security.
But more often, parents and others derided the station’s tactics on social media and on news story comments. That was especially true of Kirkwood parents, who spent the lockdown in a panic.

Stacey Woodruff said she was in tears when she first heard about the lockdown, and spent the entire time communicating with her 14-year-old daughter, who was in a math class, on her cellphone. She said her teacher was keeping the students calm.

“She kept saying, ‘Mom, I’m OK,” Woodruff said. “When I found out it was KSDK, I was and still am livid.”

Among the Kirkwood students on lockdown was freshman Caroline Goff, 14.

“We got the announcement over the intercom … then the principal walked by and said, ‘You need to lock the door and turn off the lights.’”

The students were instructed to stand against the walls, out of the sight from anyone passing in the halls. Caroline said they stood and listened for close to an hour, worrying that sounds they were hearing outside — including what were apparently police on the roof — were the noises of a gunman.

“We would hear footsteps … We were really scared, but we were all trying not to show it,” she said. “My teacher told our class that he would step in front of the person and let us all leave” if it came to that.

“We were scared that something was going to happen to us, like at Sandy Hook,” she said, referring to the 2012 school massacre in Connecticut.

Outside, Caroline’s father, Jeff Goff, was trying to figure out what was going on as police set up a perimeter. He said he noticed a media cameraman setting up outside the school immediately after the lockdown started, and wondered momentarily how the cameraman had managed to get there so quickly.

When rumors about KSDK’s role began circulating he called the station.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, do you know what you just put us through? There’s a guy [a police officer] with an automatic rifle standing in front of the school!’ ”

Officials at elementary schools in the Francis Howell and Parkway school districts reported similar visits from a KSDK reporter on Thursday.

At Bellerive Elementary, a man was buzzed into the office and asked to speak with the person in charge of security. But the man was evasive about his identity and why he was there, said Paul Tandy, spokesman for the Parkway School District. Security was alerted. Administrators later confirmed with KSDK that a station employee was at the school with a hidden camera.

When speaking over the intercom from outside the doors of a Francis Howell elementary school, the reporter said he wanted to set an appointment with the office about school security.

A secretary at Becky-David Elementary greeted him at the door and asked more questions, and she thought his responses were vague. He eventually identified himself as being with KSDK and left, district spokeswoman Jennifer Henry said. School officials notified administrators, who also called KSDK.

REPORTING ETHICS

School shootings in recent years have prompted local and national debate about school security — and, in response, local and national media investigations of the issue, some of which have created controversy.
In 2006, The Poynter Institute, a respected national journalism foundation, tackled the issue of “Reporters Testing School Security.” Among the questions the piece suggests reporters should ask themselves before undertaking such an approach is, “How will the journalists’ intrusion affect the students? What kind of disruption could be caused, such as a lockdown?”

A related list of concerns includes the question: “Do we run the risk that our ‘reporting tactics’ will become the story rather than the public safety issue we are exploring?”

That has happened sporadically around the country in recent years.

In 2012, a Fargo, N.D., television reporter aired a story using a hidden camera to demonstrate that she could walk unimpeded through three local schools. After the story aired, school security was tightened — but the reporter also faced a police investigation for ignoring signs at the school warning all visitors that it was illegal to enter the school without checking at the school office.

Last year, two reporters for a high school newspaper in New York state did their own test of security at a neighboring school, walking through an unlocked door to demonstrate the lax security. They were ultimately apprehended by school security and taken to the principal, who, upon learning what they were doing, told them (according to one account) that they “would see the full extent of the security at the school” — and had them arrested for trespassing.

After the lockdown at Kirkwood High ended, Goff and his wife, Jenny Goff, “went and hugged” their daughter. “Life is precious these days,” Jeff Goff said.

“If someone else did this, they’d be arrested,” Goff said. “It’s just not smart, with all the things that have happened in our country.”

ROSWELL, N.M. — A 12-year-old boy accused of opening fire with a shotgun at a New Mexico middle school and seriously wounding two students, has been charged with three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, authorities said on Thursday.

The boy, Mason Campbell, will be tried as a juvenile in connection with the shooting at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, said New Mexico State Police Lieutenant Emmanuel Gutierrez.

The charges were filed in children’s court on Wednesday in the state’s Fifth Judicial District Court, and the documents name the accused child.

Campbell is believed to have taken a 20-gauge shotgun from his home, modified it and planned the attack. With the weapon concealed in a duffel bag, he entered the school gymnasium and opened fire on students waiting for classes to start, police said.

Investigators were also continuing to look into the possibility that Campbell warned some friends before carrying out the attack on Tuesday at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, police said.

Students were to return to the school on Thursday with an increased police presence in the area, a New Mexico State Police dispatcher said.

The shooting left an 11-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl seriously wounded. There was no immediate word on a motive.

“We did find evidence that the suspect had planned this event,” New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas told reporters, while declining to reveal any more details.

The shooting was the second at a U.S. middle school in the past three months and comes in the midst of a contentious national debate on gun control that intensified after a gunman killed 26 people at a school in Newtown, Connecticut.

In the New Mexico shooting, the boy had modified the weapon and he had three rounds of birdshot in it, Kassetas said.

The shooter fired all three rounds, with one going into the ceiling of the gym, one into the floor and one 12 to 15 feet away, into the stands where students were gathered, Kassetas said at a news conference.

The shooting lasted just 10 seconds before a teacher, identified as John Masterson, stepped forward and persuaded the boy to put down his gun, officials said.

Juvenile charges

The suspected shooter was not charged as an adult because of his age, in accordance with New Mexico law. No one under age 14 in the state can face adult sanctions, authorities said.

The boy was being held at an “appropriate children’s facility” in Albuquerque, 170 miles to the northwest of Roswell, following the shooting said state police spokesman Lieutenant Emmanuel Gutierrez.

According to local media, the boy’s parents released a statement on Wednesday that said a judge has ordered the boy to undergo mental health evaluation and treatment.

“We are horribly sad over this tragedy on so many levels,” they wrote in the statement, which was also signed by the boy’s grandparents, according to two local television stations and CNN. “We are praying that God will be with everyone who has been affected.”

Reuters was not able to confirm the authenticity of the statement.

The students who were wounded did not appear to have been singled out, Kassetas said.

A spokesman for University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas, to which both wounded children were airlifted on Tuesday and where they underwent surgery, said the boy was listed in critical condition, while the girl’s condition was said to be satisfactory.

In October, a 12-year-old boy in Sparks, Nevada, opened fire at his school, killing a teacher and wounding two students before killing himself.

Another shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012 prompted President Barack Obama to call for sweeping new gun control measures.

Most of Obama’s proposals were defeated in Congress, but his administration this month sought new regulations aimed at clarifying restrictions on gun ownership for the mentally ill and bolstering a database used for firearms background checks.

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With feet positioned shoulder-width apart and eyes narrowing in on a target several feet ahead, arms and hands are steady and knees, slightly bent.

The top third of the forefinger rests on the trigger of a .38 revolver and the outline of a man is the target. First shot: It is powerful and loud, with the sound of the force muffled only by ear protection. The target is hit in the chest area. The shooter looks at the instructor slightly and she is told to continue. Second hit: chest. Third hit. Fourth.

“You actually did really good,” said Lt. Stephen Lavender, training bureau commander with the Montgomery Police Academy. “Want to do it again?”

The revolver is reloaded.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

It is a scenario Lavender handles on a frequent basis as he trains citizens through the academy’s Firearms Familiarization Course, a monthly eight-hour course designed to make firearm owners familiar with not only their weapon, but gun laws and the parameters they have to accept when owning a gun.

“Women are coming here to learn how to use the weapon,” he said. “And what we’re able to offer is more than just the ability to shoot.”

Nationally, more and more women are refining that ability.

According to Gallup poll data, the percentage of American women who own a firearm nearly doubled from 2005-2011, rising from 13 percent to 23 percent. In August, the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported that 37 percent of new target shooters are female, though they comprise only 22 percent of the established target-shooting population.

Dennis Cotton has seen those numbers.

As the project manager of the Alabama Shooting Complex located on the north side of Talladega, he said women are the largest growing group of shooters. The 800-acre complex is a full-service shooting complex that will address pistol, rifle and shotgun sports and archery. Within 35 miles of the complex, and of the 345,000 shooters within that range, 51 percent are women, Cotton said. The majority of the women are between the ages of 25 and 64 years old.

“Women are enjoying it,” he said. “They like to have the ability to protect themselves. It’s wide range, from teens to grandmothers.”

A steady increase
At The Gun Shoppe on Bell Road, owners Doug and Marsha Williamson have seen a steady increase in women purchasing firearms over the past five to seven years.

“I think they realize in the society we live in they are not always in a group where gentlemen are around, and they are taking personal responsibility for that,” Doug Williamson said. “These ladies have (made) the decision to be able to prepare … to take care of themselves. We have been giving classes to the private sector for almost 15 years.”

While many women still participate in the store’s co-ed classes, in the past three or four years, there has been an increase in interest in the ladies-only classes.

“… Since we offered specifically ladies-only courses for those who have had no previous exposure to firearms, and make sure everybody is accommodated according to their skill level, we’ve had more interest,” he said.

Most of the time, Williamson said, the women say they want to use the weapons safely, and that they want to learn to shoot because “they might need to use it for self-defense. The way we explain all of this is that they need to understand the Alabama provision … the aggressor must have the ability to do you bodily harm. We don’t make any recommendations in how they should deal with a situation. All we can do is explain to them what the code says and what the law says about it and what the jury looks at if there is a case of self-defense.”

The three components

During training, Lavender teaches students what to think about when deciding whether to shoot if confronted: ability, capability and jeopardy.

“Does the person have the ability to cause harm, are they capable of causing harm — that depends on if they come through that barrier, like if they are in your house,” he said. “Jeopardy is the number one thing we get them to think about because jeopardy asks them to look at ‘If I don’t do something right now, am I going to die or be seriously injured?

“If they can couple all this together, they are likely in the parameters of using deadly force to stop that person,” Lavender said. “We look at all sorts of things. Gender is always a key. How big is that male versus that female? I don’t have any self-defense tactics … even if I knew it, he would overcome it. In those efforts, we tell them to look at that.”

Lavender points out the Firearms Familiarization Course is designed to teach students to “stop, not kill.

“They also teach them to render aid. If they are breathing their last breath, they will stay down,” he said.

Teaching women

They work in attorney offices, are city employees, and even teachers. Those in the course with the Montgomery Police Academy are between the ages of 21 through their 70s.

They are of all backgrounds and are taught immediately that pulling out a gun is not a bargaining tool.

“If you pull it out, it is intended to use,” Lavender said. “If you can’t answer the three components, don’t use it as a bluffing tool. They’ll come take it from you.”

Asked whether burglars take seriously women who have guns, he said yes: “More than likely they’ll run, because they didn’t come to die.”

Women are taught to always have their pistol permit on them, otherwise it is a violation of carrying a concealed weapon, Lavender said.

“We try to make sure we paint a clear picture with everything that has to do with being a responsible carrier,” he said.

A lot of the women who take the course have guns, but have never shot them, Lavender said. It sits in a locked box and they never touch it — until crime spikes and they want to learn how to use it.

“We want to build confidence in them,” he said, “especially when they hit the center of that target. If they don’t, we sit here until they do.”

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The gunman, who killed himself, had 125 rounds of ammo, a machete and Molotov cocktails.

A heavily armed teenager who fired a fatal shotgun blast at a fellow student at a Colorado school before killing himself was a “murderer” who intended to claim many more victims, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said Monday.

The lone victim, 17-year-old Claire Davis, was shot point-blank in the face while she sat in the hallway of Arapahoe County High School on Dec. 13.

The high school senior, who was apparently a random victim, died eight days later.

Robinson, providing reporters in Centennial, Colo., with additional details on the shooting, said the entire incident lasted only about 80 seconds, The Denver Post reports.

The shooter, 18-year-old Karl Pierson, also a student at the school, shot Davis in the hallway where she was sitting then went to a nearby library where he killed himself as a unarmed security guard — a retired deputy sheriff — closed in.

“No question the person who entered the school is a murderer,” Robinson said. “He intended to hurt (a) maximum amount of people.”

The sheriff said Pierson, who was armed with a 12-guage shotgun, carried more than 125 rounds of ammunition strapped to his chest and waist on a pair of bandoliers, a machete and Molotov cocktails.

He said the shooter apparently intended to track down a librarian who had disciplined him and to whom he had made verbal threats months ago.

Robinson told reporters that Pierson had written on his arm the names of several classrooms that apparently were intended as targets. He had also written a Latin phrase that, translated to English, reads: “The die has been cast.”

Pierson was still in the planning process as recently as 30 minutes before the shooting and had bought additional ammunition.

“He took time to have a meal … went bowling alone,” Robinson said. “No question it was a very deliberate and planned event.”

Robinson said the school door that Pierson entered is supposed to be locked but rarely is because it is inconvenient.

The sheriff acknowledged that the shooting would forever change the community.

“It’s up to us to decide whether it changes us for better or worse,” Robinson said. “We will be better for this. There is no question.”

Contributing: Associated Press
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A nurse embroiled in a custody fight with his ex-wife killed his current wife before shooting his former in-laws and his onetime boss in a rampage that spanned two parishes in Louisiana, leaving three people dead and three wounded. He then fatally shot himself in the head, authorities said.

All three survivors remained hospitalized Friday, two in critical condition, Brennan Matherne, a spokesman for the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, said in an email. He said deputies are still investigating the motive.

Preliminary evidence shows that Ben Freeman, 38, first killed his wife, Denise Taylor Freeman, 43, before he went on a rampage and shot the others Thursday, Maj. Malcolm Wolfe, of the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, wrote in an email.

Denise Freeman’s body was found in a bathroom of their house, and an autopsy showed that she suffocated and drowned, Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said Friday.

According to investigators, Ben Freeman then drove to his former in-laws’ home in Lafourche Parish, about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans. With a shotgun, he killed his former mother-in-law, Susan “Pixie” Gouaux (pronounced “go”), and wounded her husband, Councilman Louis Phillip Gouaux, and one of their daughters, Andrea Gouaux. His ex-wife, Jeanne Gouaux, apparently wasn’t at the home.

About 20 minutes later, Freeman arrived at the home of Milton and Ann Bourgeois. Milton was the longtime CEO of Ochsner (OX-ner) St. Anne General Hospital in nearby Raceland, where Freeman had worked as a nurse until two years ago. Freeman shot Milton Bourgeois at close range, killing him, and shot Ann Beourgeois in the leg. She was in stable condition Friday.

Both Louis and Andrea Gouaux were in critical but stable condition following surgery Friday in New Orleans, Matherne said.

Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said Freeman had been fired from St. Anne. He said police previously had been called to the hospital after Freeman damaged a room. Freeman told officers he would seek mental help, Webre said.

But in a teleconference later Friday, Ochsner officials said Freeman had resigned voluntarily, citing personal reasons. The officials said he had worked at the hospital from May 1998 to April 2011, and that he was considered an on-call employee for another five months after that.

Freeman also had worked at two other hospitals, which along with St. Anne had been placed on lockdown for a time on Thursday.

Susan Gouaux — “Pixie” to her friends — was a teachers’ aide at Holy Savior Elementary School. She also was a talented needlewoman and knitter who designed the state bicentennial quilt square for Lafourche Parish and made scarves for all her friends, Parish President Charlotte Randolph said in a telephone interview.

Randolph said she went to school at one time or another with Philip and Susan Gouaux, and that Susan Gouaux had taught her grandchildren. The couple has six adult daughters.

Gouaux called 911 around 6:40 p.m. Thursday from his home in Lockport, telling dispatchers he had been shot in the throat, The Courier newspaper in Houma reported. Freeman was divorced from Gouaux’s daughter Jeanne, whom he married in 1997.

Jeanne Gouaux — also a nurse — had filed several protective orders against Freeman, who had pleaded guilty to harassment charges and was allowed only supervised visits with their four children, Webre said. The last protective order expired less than a month ago, he said.

“Clearly, there has been a very difficult and complicated divorce/custody issue going on,” Webre said during a news conference late Thursday.

Freeman pleaded guilty on Oct. 23 to one of two criminal telephone-harassment charges brought on a complaint filed June 19 by Gouaux and her father, Lafourche Parish Clerk of Court Vernon H. Rodrigue said. He was given a deferred sentence of a $250 fine or 10 days in jail, put on unsupervised probation for a year, and the second count of criminal harassment was dismissed, Rodrigue said.

On Nov. 27, Ben Freeman was issued a citation for simple battery domestic violence against Denise Freeman, the sheriff’s office said in a news release. A court date had been scheduled for Jan. 16, 2014.

Court records show Freeman agreed in June to pay Jeanne Gouaux $22,560 in overdue child support payments dating back two years. A settlement filed the following month showed the couple would sell three adjacent lots near her parents’ house and split the $25,000 in proceeds; Freeman also agreed to pay Gouaux $39,000.

Jeanne Gouaux and the children lived with her parents for a while after the divorce, said Rita Bonvillain (BAHN-vee-yenh), 83, a neighbor of the family for nearly 30 years. She said Andrea Gouaux, a nurse like her sister Jeanne, was visiting from Texas.

Whenever a holiday came, she said, children filled the house and yard. A trampoline, soccer balls and a swing hanging from a big oak in the front yard testified to that.

Bonvillain choked up and held back tears several times as she talked about the Gouauxes. Since her husband died, they regularly have stopped by to ask if she needs groceries or other errands run. The councilman once told her, “If you ever hear a sound at night and want someone to check it out, call me,” she said.

Ben Freeman was found dead around 10:45 p.m. along U.S. Highway 90 near Bayou Blue. He had shot himself in the head.

At Denise Freeman’s house, a man who did not give his name demanded that an Associated Press reporter leave his sister’s property.

Others in the neighborhood of quaint middle-class, ranch-style houses in Houma, the Terrebonne Parish seat, said the house was originally hers.

She had only recently married Freeman, but she and her son Josh — of elementary school age — had lived there for years, said Glenn Cradeur, who has owned his house, two down from hers, for 28 years. He said he believed the boy was not home when his mother was killed.

Cradeur said he saw no signs of trouble until about two weeks ago, when he saw police vehicles outside the home, responding to what he believed was a domestic dispute.

He returned from a visit to out-of-town relatives to find emergency vehicles outside the house and stunned neighbors gathered nearby.

“It’s shocking, and it’s sad,” he said.

———

Associated Press writer Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans and researcher Judith Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

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Jefferson Parish LA Dec 26 2013 Christmas Eve got off to a sour start for University of Southern Mississippi student Randolph Driscoll when he awoke Tuesday morning to find the back passenger window of his Chevrolet Trailblazer shattered by a pellet rifle. Glass covered the roadway in front of his aunt’s Ellen Drive home in Marrero, and his vehicle wasn’t the only overnight target.

Residents as early afternoon Tuesday reported 166 vehicles with windows shot in several West Bank neighborhoods, including Hillcrest, Oak Cove and Oak Forest, according to Col. John Fortunato, spokesman for the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.

“Those victims who were vandalized had to wake up and face having to get their vehicles fixed the day before Christmas,” Fortunato said.

he suspects only shattered windows. No one was injured and residents did not report any stolen property. Authorities aren’t sure when the shootings occurred, but most residents discovered the damage at daybreak.

Driscoll, 24, who was just visiting for the holidays, said he parked his truck on the street Monday night with no damage. He overheard some dogs barking around midnight and said he suspected the culprits may have come through around that time.

Two other neighbors in the same block of Ellen Drive also woke to find their windows shattered. “It’s like nobody has anything better to do,” Driscoll said.

He spent most of the morning on the telephone with an auto glass shop trying to schedule a repair. “There was so many of them, they couldn’t fit me in,” he said.

A few Blocks away, Safelite Autoglass technician Ryan DuVernay worked to replace the back windshield of a minivan on Lemans Drive. He and coworkers had expected Christmas Eve to be a short, easy day.

“We planned on all of us eating a big lunch over at our office and then we were going to call it a half-day,” DuVernay said.

He had already replaced five windows in the neighborhood by 12:45 p.m. and was headed to one more residence before returning to the office where co-workers were swamped with damaged cars.

“Right now we’re at 28 vehicle glasses installed for today, and we have Thursday and Friday already booked solid,” said Bruce Cuquet, manager of the
Safelite located at 2000 Lapalco Blvd., Harvey.

Most of the damage has been to rear windshields, Cuquet said.

Victims who may already be low on cash because of holiday spending now find themselves reaching for their wallets again to pay for pricey window replacement. Repairs can cost anywhere between $200 to $1,000, Cuquet said. The jobs become more expensive if the windows include defrosters and alarms.

After combing through video from the department’s mounted crime and automated license-plate recognition cameras, Sheriff’s Office investigators released a still frame from surveillance footage that shows a silver Ford Escape they say may be linked to the crimes.

If the above car is spotted, witnesses are asked to contact JPSO Auto Theft Detective C. Dear at 504.874.4349.

Anyone with information about the Christmas Eve pellet gun-shooting spree on the West Bank is asked to call the Sheriff’s Office investigations bureau at 504.364.5300. The public can also call Crimestoppers at 504.822.1111 or toll-free at 877.903.7867. Tips can be texted to C-R-I-M-E-S (274637); text TELLCS then the crime information. Callers or texters do not have to give their names or testify, and can earn a $2,500 reward for information that leads to an indictment.
NOLA
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AUSTIN, Texas — Research firm IHS Inc. is forecasting strong growth for security equipment in schools throughout the United States for the next several years. IHS estimates the market size for security equipment in schools to reach $634 million this year and is expected to surpass $720 million by 2014.

The research firm’s attributes the growth, in part, to high-profile shootings such as the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre on Dec. 14, 2012. These events force schools to review their existing policies and create threat assessments as well as new policies and procedures. There is no set standard for what schools need to do to prevent these tragedies, according to Blake Kozak, senior analyst for access control, fire and security at IHS.
“Perhaps the key here is to have ongoing discussions and security reviews long after such events fade from media coverage,” Kozak says, “for example continued knowledge sharing between school districts and universities to find best practices.”

In many cases, funding continues to be a barrier for the expanded deployment of security equipment. Some of the budget shortfall is being mitigated by additional funds provided to schools through state-funding and grants. Also, the U.S. Justice Department is helping to pay for additional officers. It awarded $45 million from Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants this year to schools that planned security enhancements. This also includes Secure Our Schools (SOS) programs.

Security equipment installations and upgrades as well as policies will vary by school district and university; however, IHS finds that video surveillance will be the focal point in the years to come.

Effective security comes from having effective policies in place and then leveraging the security system you have. For example, video surveillance can act as a “force multiplier” by giving the campus officers greater visibility, either through having more cameras on campus, or by being more intelligent and combining access control and video surveillance technologies. In other observations by IHS:

IHS expects growth of video surveillance in schools to be twice as fast as that of access control through 2017.
From the end-user perspective, there are several critical success factors that decision makers look for in a security solution: user-friendly, integration, safety, reliability.

School officials are likely to spend money on a case by case basis. However, there is a growing trend to have interactive solutions between staff and first responders. In addition, video is looking to be used in real-time not just for forensics. Having video cameras on the perimeter of the school building can also act as a deterrent in some cases.

Investment will likely differ between universities and K-12. Oftentimes there are a few police officers per school district, and most of the time these officers are used to monitoring high schools (rather than elementary). Alternatively, universities often have their own dedicated police that could utilize a control room. It also tends to be easier for universities to increase its police force before a K-12 school district.

Having video surveillance in place is crucial, but having folks in place who can quickly respond to a situation is equally important.

For K-12, many schools already have access control but these solutions are often very basic using only proximity cards and in some cases push-pin access codes. On the other hand, many universities have already transitioned to higher security access solutions.

“Schools need to continue to develop independent security plans and develop automated approaches when able. But schools also shouldn’t forget other means of security such as stronger windows and doors,” Blake says.

Using the Sandy Hook tragedy as an example, the school had access control in place but the shooter was able to break through the glass to gain entry to the building. So while video and access control equipment provide a good starting point for a high level of security, having several layers of security help schools take a step in the right direction to prevent or limit similar tragedies in the future.

In July 2013, IHS released the “Vertical Insights: Video Surveillance & Security in Education” report, which predicts that the market for security systems integration in educational institutions is set to expand to $4.9 billion in 2017, up from $2.7 billion in 2012. Security systems integration includes design, consultancy, installation, service, maintenance and security equipment. Analysts expect double-digit growth every year throughout the forecast, with revenue rising by 13% to reach $3 billion in 2013.

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