School intelligence agent – ​​Kommersant St. Petersburg

The legislature of St. Petersburg in three readings adopted a draft appeal to the Prime Minister of Russia Mikhail Mishustin on the issue of school security. The deputies want the guards to go through a special commission, have skills in martial arts, schools have two perimeters and a face recognition system. Also, the guards should analyze the behavior of people for potentially dangerous and almost carry out undercover work among the local population. Opponents of the project believe that the police should be better trained.

The idea to modernize school security came to Petersburg deputies after the tragedy in Izhevsk. There, in September 2022, a former student staged a shooting that killed 18 people. The attacker shot himself. In support of their proposal, the parliamentarians cite other similar incidents: an explosion and shooting at a college in Kerch in 2018, a shooting at a school in Kazan in 2021 and at Perm University in the same year.

According to St. Petersburg legislators, after the increase in such incidents, school security should be taken more seriously. “Educational organizations are protected by persons who, for various reasons (for example, the level of physical fitness), are not able to respond in a timely manner to an external threat and protect children and teachers,” the letter says.

It is proposed to solve this problem by creating special commissions, where it is necessary to include an employee of the National Guard.

These commissions should select and check the training of PSC employees who will guard schools, kindergartens and other educational institutions. The deputies believe that it is necessary to establish an age limit for working as a security guard, and candidates must be physically strong, master some kind of martial art and be equipped with protective equipment, such as stun guns, traumatic or gas pistols. In addition, the guard is invited to learn the skills of “analyzing and identifying potential threats (identifying signs of the preparation of possible crimes, changing external circumstances that create potential risks)”.

Additionally, it is necessary that there are two security posts – one outside the building of the educational institution. “We ask you to consider the possibility of establishing mandatory requirements for the equipment of workplaces for employees of security organizations on the territory of educational organizations, in particular, the organization of at least two posts in an educational organization,” the document says. In addition, we need a face recognition system.

Teachers and children are also supposed to be trained, and the response to an emergency should be brought to automatic. They want to do this by regularly modeling such incidents.

The initiator of the appeal, United Russia deputy Alexei Dalmatov, in a comment on the website of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly said that the guards need to carry out almost undercover work.

“It’s not enough just to sit at the entrance, you need to actively respond to everything that happens around, track down people who arouse suspicion. They must be in complete control of the situation. Up to establishing contacts with the local population,” he said.

Mr. Dalmatov did not answer calls from Kommersant-SPb.

44 MPs voted in favor of the appeal, while five voted against it. One of them, deputy head of the Yabloko faction, Boris Vishnevsky, explained to Kommersant-SPb that such functions should be performed by the police. “It’s pointless. It is necessary that the police work normally, that they follow potential terrorists, and not oppositionists. A face recognition system may be a good idea, but the rest is not needed,” says Mr. Vishnevsky. He also believes that better arms control is needed.

This is not the first attempt by city parliamentarians to fight shooting in schools. At the end of October, parliamentarians asked Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and Health Minister Mikhail Murashko to force psychiatric clinics to report more often about your subordinates. Deputies believe that this will help to better monitor potentially dangerous members of society.

Oleg Dilimbetov