Districts Turn to School Resource Officers for Students' Safety

Twelve percent of schools in the U.S. have student resource officers: law enforcement officers who are assigned to specific schools to prevent juvenile delinquency. They’ve been around since the 1970s, but with the recent rash of school shootings, many officers now have a different role in public schools across the country.

Moe Canady is the executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers. He says he has seen a greater demand for SROs in the last year and nine months, particularly since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012.

Many school systems, such as Santa Maria, Calif., are adding resource officers this year. Santa Maria is ranked the 10th most violent city in California.

“Everybody that has the budget for it is doing it,” said Lt. Marc Schneider of the Santa Maria Police Department. “A lot of campuses really like having that officer on campus, and it helps us on the patrol too.”

Schneider said the City of Santa Maria made budgetary changes, allowing the police department to have three officers in their two high schools, along with a third in an elementary school.

“They’re on campus all day long,” Schneider said. “They interact with the kids, they investigate even issues that don’t rise to a criminal level. They try to intervene to prevent things from rising to a criminal level.”

Kristina Chew, whose son Charlie has attended public schools in New Jersey and California, thinks that police presence might normalize the militarization of everyday life: For example, kids will get used to seeing guns in schools.

“Where is the line?” Chew said. “Is there even a line between an educational issue and a criminal issue?”

Chew’s son is autistic, so she is particularly concerned about the “unfairness to troubled teenage boys.” She cites examples of autistic kids being arrested at school.

“They’re contributing to the militarization of everyday life,” Chew said.

Andre Hauser, principal at Waterford High School in Waterford, Conn., thinks it’s a good idea.

“It allows kids to see police officers as real people,” Hauser said.

Some parents worry because resource officers are armed. The ones at Waterford High School are.

“They’re uniformed police officers,” Hauser said. “They carry all the things that a police officer usually carries.”

Hauser said that in his years at the school, he’s never seen an incident where the officer needed to use force.

“Every now and then you have a little fender-bender in the parking lot,” he said.

But if there’s ever an emergency at Waterford, resource officers are ready for it. Students and teachers are also prepared: They practice a lockdown drill twice a year.

Canady believes that such drills can help keep students safe in the event of violence, even without a school resource officer.

“I think that schools need to have a school safety team made up of a variety of individuals that are on campus: vice principal, nurse, janitorial service, cafeteria, and students,” Canady said. “They need to have a well-thought-out school safety plan that is regularly practiced.”