I realize I am probably the lone poster that feels resource officers belong in every school. I cannot forget Sandy Hook, Columbia and all of the other school shootings. I also like that in our district they are full fledged sherriff or city police officers not school board employees.
Our school district is talking about starting their own police department which I don't agree with. IMO it is the way for the district to circumvent the system and have total control over the students and laws.
Just my two cents.
BBM-- I will sit next to you, because as I posted earlier in this thread, I do believe all
public schools should have at least one or two officers on duty during the school day. It is simply too controversial to try to identify and get wide agreement on criteria for "which" schools should have officers, and which don't need them. Putting officers in
all public schools would set this as the norm, and removes the perception of bias and discrimination. And I do think there is a strong value on a number of levels, to having officers present during the school day. I have changed my ideas on this completely in the past 10 years or so.
The bigger question is who should pay for them-- the county or the district or the state? And where do the officers fit in on the administrative chart for the school, if at all? Who do the officers answer to? What is their chain of command, and area of authority and responsibility?
I don't think officers need to be mandated in private schools unless the schools and their parents want them, and are willing to pay for them.
I was reading up on SRO's. I read at one school gang violence incidents were cut in half with the presence of an SRO.
I think we have to be an educated consumer of statistics. I don't think school crime has decreased, and I can dig up a bunch of evidence to show it has increased.
Anyone relatively skilled in statistics can massage and manipulate numbers of "something" to get the kind of outcome they are looking for-- or design a study to "only" look at specific things while leaving other things out.
As an example, some school districts have "decided" not to report criminal activity on K-12 campuses to "prevent" youths from having a law enforcement record-- with the SECONDARY benefit of the school district being able to triumphantly report to the community and various other agencies that "Crime has decreased in our district schools".
Just one example of this kind of re-labelling of criminal activity that was in the news recently was the efforts of a school to characterize
stolen property discovered in a student backpack,
along with burglary tools, as
"found property."
School crime reporting is not standardized, and is considered by a number of authoritative agencies to be
vastly underreported.
http://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends/school-crime-reporting-and-underreporting/
We find it ironic that here at a private consulting firm we can have more accurate and current counts on school-associated violent deaths than a federal agency which spends millions and billions a year to function. We also find it odd that our school death stats show a spike in the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 school years, while the federal government is simultaneously telling the American public that school crime has dramatically declined.
State school crime reporting requirements vary and lack enforcement
A number of states created legislation following the spate of national school shootings in the late 1990s to require local school districts to report school crimes to state departments of education and/or other state authorities. The specific requirements vary state to state and the quality of reporting to states by local districts has repeatedly come into question.
The problem with state school crime reporting requirements is simply that there are few, if any, rewards for schools that accurately report crimes and no meaningful consequences for those that fail to do so. In general there is no real auditing or enforcement. Even in cases where local daily newspapers have investigated and identified gross inaccuracies in local school district crime reports to states and to police, most school districts are quick to claim clerical errors or a lack of understanding of the law and guidelines for reporting and nobody is ever significantly held accountable with substantive consequences.
BBM