Student Resource Officers Can’t Be Standardized

Hello readers, I would like to share with you that after further research some school districts have recently seem improvements of student-police relations from progressive SRO programs. While these practices could be adopted everywhere, the is no national standard or policy that SRO's must abide by. This is because they are agents of community oriented policing which will have different focuses and policies from region to region.

As addressed earlier on this blog site SRO’s have increased dramatically since shootings in the 90’s. One source told me that 42% of public high schools now have an SRO in them. While this may look like more safety from the outside looking in, students are still being criminalized for non-criminal behavior. As Dewey Cornell, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia put it, “If you put police officers in schools as guards, they will have little to do and they will not be in the high crime areas of our community where they are needed the most.” In an MSNBC article from 2013, the Obama adminstration gave $45 in federal grants to employ 356 new SRO's.  It doesn’t look like there will be an insufficient amount of SRO’s any time soon. So if we have so many police in school, what are they doing to improve school safety?

In my other article I researched for this blog, three different counties in the U.S. compared their progressive models for policing in schools. The counties were: Clayton County, Georgia; Broward County, Florida(were the Parkland shooting occured); and Denver, Colorado. Like the first article, this article stated that disorderly conduct was one of the highest citations to SRO’s. This is definitely an issue that could be tackled at the principles office instead of being brought forth to a police officer. For Broward County the article explains that principles are used before an SRO is ever consulted.  However, in Denver it isn’t the same as officers may intervene without permission of the principal. But, both of these districts and Clayton County have seen great results from their recent programming of police in schools, even though they do things differently. 

Despite a the terrible tragedy of the Parkland Shooting in Broward County, Florida, all three of these schools have seem positive benefits from progressive programs. In Clayton County, weapons on campuses decreased by 70% and other positive effects were manifested but I think the greatest stat from this is that graduation rates have increased by 20%. Broward County says in one school quarter suspensions were down 66 percent and expulsions down by 55%. In Denver, total suspensions were down 60% and referral of youth to law enforcement of all youth, including youth of color, dropped 57%.

To sum up my findings, both the articles knew that from the 90’s on they have been dramatically increasing. Also, both articles found that with SRO presence, there is a higher likelihood of arrests for even minor infractions. On the contrary the first article believed that kids were being arrested for things that they were not previously arrested for. The third article points to the reduction of arrests from new progressive programs. If three regions have seen positive results from progressive programing I think many other regions can see the same results. Just some things for you to consider, has the school district in your area successfully integrated SRO’s into their schools? Do kids feel safe going to school? Are the role of the SRO’s in your school clearly defined?


First Photo: www.pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/22/22-school-crime-rates.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.2x.jpg

Second Photo:www. encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRZXS2iiPltOZgpVYpA4b-9meF-5gqXhV_QrgPG1pmHG4pA2rPX