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NJ's Top Cop Orders Extra Security For Schools Following Texas Massacre

Acting New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin ordered State Police and all 21 county prosecutors Tuesday night to immediately boost law enforcement presence at schools statewide following the Texas massacre.

Acting New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin

Acting New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin

Photo Credit: CIT-NJ

"The safety of our state's residents—including and especially our children—is my top priority," Platkin said after he and State Police Supt. Col. Patrick Callahan had a virtual emergency meeting with law enforcement officers throughout New Jersey.

The purpose, he said, was to "ensure coordination in the aftermath of this tragedy."

The deadliest school shooting since the 2012 slaughter in Newtown, Conn., claimed the lives of 19 students, two adults and the 18-year-old gunman in the rural Texas town of Uvalde on Tuesday.

Mostly second- through fourth-graders were slain, authorities said.

This followed an alarming report released by the F.B.I. on Monday that detailed a rapidly accelerating rate of public shootings in the United States.

A total of “active shooter” attacks last year killed 103 people and injured 130 others, the highest annual number since 2017, when 143 people were killed and hundreds more wounded.

"Nothing about this is normal," Platkin said Tuesday. "We do not have to accept that we live in a country where children are shot just for going to school."

New Jersey State Police will increase their presence at the 111 schools where troopers are the primary law enforcers. County prosecutors will direct municipal police chiefs to do the same, Platkin said.

Troopers who travel in unmarked units will also be "randomly and consistently visiting schools they pass as they commute to their assignments throughout the state," said Callahan, the State Police superintendent.

"My heart goes out to the families of the victims," Platkin said, adding that "we must all do everything we can to end the epidemic of gun violence."

"Our students, their families and caregivers, teachers, and school administrators should feel safe in school, and be assured that New Jersey's law enforcement agencies will do everything in their power to protect them," the attorney general said. 

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