What do Student Resource Officers Actually Do?

The topic of Student Resource Officer's(SRO's) is a hot topic amidst a few school shooting earlier this year including the Parkland shooting in Florida which took 17 peoples lives. Currently, our nation has over 43,000 SRO's employed to protect the faculty and staff according to The National Center of Education. While the role of these officers isn't the same from school to school they try to uphold the position as part teacher, part counselor, and part cop. But where did these officers come from?

There weren't very many SRO's around until the 1990's in the wake of the Gun Free Schools Act of 1994 combined with the the Columbine High School Shooting in 1996. Prior to these events there were policies known as 'Zero Tolerance Policies' that were implemented to deter misbehavior in schools. However, this policy may have turned out to hyper criminalize students for minor infractions instead of deter them. Prior to officers in school, school administrators were the ones that had to deal with misbehavior before SRO's and often times this kept students out of the Juvenile Justice system.

After further research it has come to my attention that the function of an SRO can be directly related to the social and educational advantage or disadvantage of the schools area. While they have many different roles, the SRO in disadvantaged areas tends to play the role of cop more than counselor and teacher. In these instances the safety of the students is of course their number one priority but at what cost to the student? These SRO's keep dangers outside the schools but inside the schools the zero tolerance policies may be compromising the trust students have in police. A 2011 study conducted by the Council of State Governments Justice Center and Public Policy Research Institute found that schools punish black and latino students more often and more harshly than other students, and that black students were four times more likely to receive a citation for minor misbehavior than other students.

School administrators may believe that the SRO in their school has reduced misbehavior. But on another hand we have statistics that tell us these officers are getting them on track to be apart of the criminal justice system for minor offenses. So are the schools not safe or are officers being to strict with students? Furthermore, according to the National Center for Education Statistics in 2013 only 5% of serious disciplinary actions have involved possession of a weapon and yet there's a high rate of expulsions especially in disadvantaged areas. Some may suggest more SRO's are needed in schools, but I like this viewpoint from the  Denver Post, "some lawmakers say they want the funds for safety training and not more armed officers."  To offer a solution, if SRO’s focused the same amount of time on law enforcement as education, perhaps then SRO’s are making schools much safer. Greater trust between police and students may result as well. I wonder what exactly is safety training? Is it training the officers or the officers training the faculty and staff of the school to handle misbehaving students?


Citation:
Lynch, Caitlin G., Randy R. Gainey, and Allison T. Chappell. "The Effects of Social and Educational  Disadvantage on the Roles and Functions of School Resource Officers." Policing, vol. 39, no. 3, 2016, pp. 521-535. ProQuest, http://0-search.proquest.com.patris.apu.edu/docview/1826809242? d     accountid=84

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