Stunned by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Connecticut, officers and school officials in Douglas County in Colorado felt they had to do something to reassure students.

Their solution: Have officers on patrol do their arrest reports and other paperwork in school parking lots, rather than pulling off the road or returning to the sheriff’s department.

The decision has had an immediate calming impact at a time when the nation is embroiled in the debate over gun control and gun violence.

Security officers have long been assigned to the Douglas County school district’s middle and high schools. But the district couldn’t assign an officer to each of its more than 50 elementary schools. The district offers Wi-Fi in elementary school parking lots so officers can do their paperwork there.