Most schools around here have School Resource Officers who are City police officers or Sheriff's deputies. They are there for school security and to interact with students and have a good rapport with them and hopefully can head off any problems before they occur. But now with police being seen as the bad guy schools are thinking about doing away with them and in turn save them money. They look at the incident at Stoneman Douglas High School where school resource officer Scot Peterson refused to enter the school while the shooting was going on. Yet they fail to show all the times such officers headed off potential shooting incidents. In fact students who heard of such things have reported this info to a SRO and stopped a shooting. So do you think schools should retain a SRO program or dismantle it? They wanted to also arm teachers so I don't know where the answer lies for protecting students against a school shooting.
Should School Resource Officers be phased out of schools?
They did not exist back when I was in high school, they started added them a few years after I graduated.
Things were bad without them, when fights happened schools handled it internally.
I'll give you two examples of what I mean.
1. Two best friends started fighting over the same girl, both were buff tough football players, the fight started on the 2nd floor and went on for a good 10 minutes, in the end one lifted the other over the rail and dropped his former friend down to the first level where he nearly died.
School handled that as a fight, suspended them both... no police involvement no police record for either of them.
2. I personally was walking down the hallway and woke up in a MRI machine in the hospital, some guy who did not like me, hit me from behind with a metal pipe. I don't recall it, cause I went unconscious the first hit. There was plenty of witnesses to this, that said I went down and he just kept beating on me. They could not wake me up, so they called an ambulance and had me taken to the ER where they started the scan.
The school suspended me for 1 day for being involved in a fight, and the other guy got 5 days.
When they added the Resource officer, those both would of have been handled by the police, the guy that assaulted me, would have been arrested and gone to juvy. The other one that tried to kill his former friend, would have been arrested and gone to juvy as well.
Thing is a officer could have stopped the 10 minute fight, before he got thrown over the railing, they would not have been able to do anything to protect me other than call for help faster, and arrest the guy.
My parents and I tried to file a police report but was told, they don't get involved with things like that UNLESS someone is harmed, say stabbed or shot. Basically one could use their fists or blunt objects as much as they want.
I fully support the resource officers and the camera's that have been added everyone they legally can. The camera's students often think of are privacy violations but no one has a expectation of privacy in public and schools are public (minus restrooms and changing rooms.) The camera's in conjunction with the resource officer have led to the arrest and conviction of rapists, who pushed a girl under the stairs to assault her, another case girl was dragged into boys locker room and gang raped... video showed her being forced in, but nothing inside but that was enough combined with other evidence.
It has stopped all in school fights, as everyone knows they'll be on camera and the officer will be there within minutes or seconds. Plus whoever starts the fight is going to juvy, or if a 18 year old senior, to jail.
Sure some fights have moved off school property, but that isn't the schools issue.
Just cause that loser Scot Peterson refused to enter the school, the vast majority of officers here would. In my state though, teachers are allowed to conceal carry, no one can legally ask what teachers do carry. Its better that way, someone wanting to do a shooting would have no idea how many are armed in the school. The districts say though, IF they see a gun they'll assume your a shooter... even if a teacher so must stay concealed at all times. There has never been accident with any of it, and its been legal for 12 or so years.
They should be phased out for many reasons. They represent authority figures with all the police paraphernalia and guns that tend to trigger some adolescent boys in particular, and they are next to useless in school shooting situations, and they absolutely should not be used in disciplinary situations. They cause more problems than they solve and have no obvious utility.
On the countrary. Arm up the SRO's with M4's and give them ten mags. Just go War on Terror on this shit and remind kids that death comes from the State.
No. SROs do far more good than not. If anything schools & the related agencies should put more effort into ensuring SROs are properly equipped to deal with situations.
In a number of tougher schools if SROs didn't exist it'd be more of a gang-ridden "warzone" than anything. The movie Dangerous Minds gives a watered-down highly censored version of what some of these tougher schools are like.
The incident at Stoneman Douglas High School was a mental case (Cruz), a coward (Peterson) & incompetence (Jordan who came later).
I think they should be kept. What other security do we have as they allow no teachers to carry guns? We have more to worry about with students as young as 9 shooting each other in schools than the School Police Officer.
Never had them in high school in my neck of the woods. But when things got disruptive the troublemakers were removed from classes. If it became a recurring problem, parents would come to school and sit quietly in the back of classes. Usually it was the dads who were built like lumberjacks.
How would you know if you weren't in school. When I was in high school all the school resource officers were pretty cool. You could talk to them and if you, say, were having problems with anyone like abusive parents, you could talk to them and they could take the steps needed to do away with that. Plus the lady officers were way cool because the girls were not afraid to talk to them.
In my opinion yes. Only the kids that are doing wrong, like selling drugs have reason to fear them. In fact the female officer in my school was popular with the kids and they knew she was fair and impartial and never gave kids a talking to unless they deserved it.
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