Fontana schools police Chief Billy Green said the semiautomatic rifles are designed to increase shooting accuracy and provide the 14 officers with more effective power against assailants wearing body armor. (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times / ) 
 
 Police officers in the Fontana Unified School District were armed recently with semiautomatic rifles, drawing sharp criticism and sparking an effort to ban such weapons on school campuses. 
 
 The Colt military-style rifles, which cost about $1,000 each, are kept in safes when officers are on campus and will be used only in "extreme emergency cases" like the massacre in Newtown, Conn., Supt. Cali Olsen-Binks said. 
 
 The district purchased the rifles in October and received them in December, before the tragedy in Newtown, where a gunman killed 26 people — 20 of them children — at an elementary school. The shooting sparked debate on whether armed school guards could prevent these types of tragedies. 
 
 The purchase was not spurred by a specific event, Fontana Unified School District police Chief Billy Green said. The rifles are designed to increase shooting accuracy and provide the 14 officers with more effective power against assailants wearing body armor, Green said, adding that those capabilities are necessary for officers to stop a well-armed gunman. 
 
 "If you know of a better way to stop someone on campus that's killing children or staff members with a rifle, I'd like to hear it," he said. "I don't think it's best to send my people in to stop them with just handguns." 
 
 "I hope we would never have to use it," Green said. "But if we do, I'd like them to be prepared." 
 
 Several other school districts have similar weapons but policies differ on whether they are brought on campus or left in patrol car trunks or administration buildings. 
 
 Fontana school police bought the guns for about $14,000, which fell below the threshold that requires school board approval. School board members were not informed until after the purchase. 
 
 Board member Leticia Garcia said the police chief and superintendent should have alerted the five-member board and held a public hearing on the issue. She said arming officers with such weapons is a policy matter and should have been decided by the entire school district community, especially in light of the ongoing debate around the country. 
 
 Garcia, whose son attends Fontana High School, said she is working with local state legislators to draft a bill that would keep school police departments from taking these types of weapons onto campuses. 
 
 "We're turning our schools into a militarized zone," she said. 
 
 But the Fontana school superintendent said she believes it's a necessary evil to have the guns on campus to keep the 40,000-plus students and staff members safe. Officers have gone through training for the weapons, Olsen-Binks said. 
 
 "It balances providing that community-oriented openness at schools without compromising any kind of security for students and employees," she said. 
 
 Although she stopped short of saying the matter should have been put before the board, Olsen-Binks said doing so might have helped ease concerns. 
 
 "Having an opportunity for more community discussion is always a good thing," she said. 
 
 The rifles are kept either in the trunk of the police officer's vehicle or in a safe on campus. 
 
 Still, Garcia worries that bringing such a weapon on campus could lead to it falling into the wrong hands. An officer could be overtaken or someone could gain access to the safe, she said. 
 
 "Teenagers can get creative," Garcia said. 
 
 Green, however, dismissed that concern as unrealistic. 
 
 The Los Angeles Unified School District's police department has issued "patrol rifles" to officers on an as-needed basis, the district said in a statement. The department does not disclose the number of rifles given to officers. 
 
 Most San Diego Unified School District police officers have AR-15 rifles, Lt. Joe Florentino said. But the department did not buy the weapons; rather, officers were allowed to purchase their own — which many did, he said. 
 
 The rifles are kept in the trunk of the officer's vehicle and are not brought into school buildings. Although there is no policy yet, bringing the rifles into buildings is something the department is looking at, Florentino said. 
 
 "From a safety standpoint, we have police officers that want the weapons close by," he said. "If we keep them in the vehicle trunk, they would have to run to the car and grab it if they need it." 
 
 stephen.ceasar@latimes.com 

 This image provided by the Fontana Unified School District Police shows a Colt LE6940 semiautomatic rifle, one of 14 purchased by the Fontana Unified School District to help provide security for the school,... (Associated Press) 
 
 This image provided by the Fontana Unified School District Police shows a Colt LE6940 semiautomatic rifle, one of 14 purchased by the Fontana Unified School District to help provide security for the school,... (Associated Press) 
 
 The semiautomatic rifles look like they belong in a war zone instead of a suburban public school, but officials in this Los Angeles-area city say the high-powered weapons now in the hands of school police could prevent a massacre. 
 
 Fontana Unified School District police purchased 14 of the Colt LE6940 rifles last fall, and they were delivered the first week of December _ a week before the Connecticut school shooting. Over the holiday break, the district's 14 school police officers received 40 hours of training on the rifles. Officers check them out for each shift from a fireproof safe in the police force's main office. 
 
 Fontana isn't the first district to try this. Other Southern California districts also have rifle programs _ some that have been in operation for several years. Fontana school police Chief Billy Green said he used money from fingerprinting fees to purchase the guns for $14,000 after identifying a "critical vulnerability" in his force's ability to protect students. The officers, who already wear sidearms, wouldn't be able to stop a shooter like the one in Connecticut, he said Wednesday. 
 
 "They're not walking around telling kids, `Hurry up and get to class' with a gun around their neck," the chief said. "Parents need to know that if there was a shooter on their child's campus that was equipped with body armor or a rifle, we would be limited in our ability to stop that threat to their children." 
 
 Some parents and students, however, reacted with alarm to the news that school resource officers were being issued the rifles during their shifts. The officers split their time between 44 schools in the district and keep the rifles in a safe at their assigned school or secured in their patrol car each day before checking the weapon back in to the school police headquarters each night. 
 
 Only sergeants trained for years to use the rifles are authorized to check out the rifles from the police armory, where they are kept. 
 
 "If the wrong person gets ahold of the gun, then we have another shooter going around with a gun. What happens then?" said James Henriquez, a 16-year-old sophomore who just enrolled at Fontana High School this week after moving from Texas. 
 
 Other students said they felt disillusioned that officials would spend money on semiautomatic rifles while the district eliminated its comprehensive guidance counseling program two years ago. 
 
 "They should get guns, but not as many and not spend so much money on them," said student Elizabeth Tovar. "They should use the money to get back our counselors because a lot of us really need them." 
 
 The district saved millions by restructuring guidance services, said Superintendent Cali Olsen-Binks. 
 
 The 40,000-student district came up with the school rifle program after consulting with top school safety experts and looking at what other large districts had done, said Olsen-Binks. 
 
 Santa Ana Unified School District, in nearby Orange County, has had a rifle program for about two years that operates similarly to the one Fontana has started, said police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna. 
 
 The Los Angeles School Police Department also deploys rifles to its officers as needed, the department said in a statement. It would not say how many rifles district police have but said the weapons are kept in the department's armory and are handed out and returned daily. 
 
 "I came from a teaching background, and it's appalling to think that we'd have to have security officers _ let alone armed police officers _ on our campuses," Olsen-Binks said. "But the bottom line is ... everybody has anxiety over school safety right now." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Robert Jablon and Christina Hoag in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
– Armed police have long patrolled the 44 schools in Fontana Unified School District near Los Angeles, but, since returning from the holidays, the district's 14 officers have been packing much more serious heat, controversially upgrading to Colt LE6940 semiautomatic rifles, reports the the Los Angeles Times. The guns were actually purchased in October, well before the Sandy Hook shooting, but the district's police chief says they were necessary for dealing with such heavily armed attackers. "If you know of a better way to stop someone on campus that's killing children or staff members with a rifle, I'd like to hear it," he says. Some have criticized the $14,000 spent to buy the 14 rifles, coming two years after the schools' guidance programs were axed. "They should use the money to get back our counselors because a lot of us really need them," one student tells the AP. Some board officials are also upset that they were not informed about the high-powered gun upgrade, which they say should have been run by them as a policy issue; police didn't need budgetary approval because the dollar amount was under the threshold. "We're turning our schools into a militarized zone," said one board member.