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School Resource Officers

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Sheriff Bill Rasco made it one of his top priorities when he took office in January 2008 to be sure our children and schools had school resource officers in them. These officers have already impacted the schools in many positive ways. A lot of people ask, "What is a school resource officer and what do they do?" A school resource officer is a Certified Law Enforcement Officer in the State and has gone through an additional 40 hours of training with the Mississippi Department of Education. All SRO's that work for the Desoto County Sheriff's Department are ALERRT certified through Mississippi Homeland Security and are required to attend other training seminars and courses each year. SRO's must enjoy working with young children and teens and be positive influences in their lives. A typical day for any SRO consists of being a role model, counseling a student, giving advice as you interact with students in the lunch room or hall, encouraging them to keep applying themselves, making sure the school is safe, being able to read people and students sensing trouble and of course, enforcing the law.

School Resource Officer (SRO) programs have been in schools since the 1960's. Although the placement of law enforcement officers in schools has grown tremendously over the past decade, the move to do so appears to have increased dramatically following the school shootings of the late 1990s. Does the presence of police in schools create an "armed camp" or a "prison-like" environment as some opponents claim? Absolutely not!

In fact, most SROs will tell you that they have prevented far more incidents from occurring than they have made actual arrests. SROs typically focus their functions on the "Triad Model" consisting of law enforcement, student counseling, and law-related education. To fully understand this aspect of school safety, SROs and school-law enforcement relationships must be viewed as the first-line of prevention, not as being punitive or prison-like.

Unfortunately, a lack of understanding of SRO programs by many representatives of academia, the media, elected officials, and others have resulted in misinformation and misrepresentation of the programs as being reactionary and punitive when in reality, they are actually very proactive and preventative when professionally implemented by school and law enforcement officials. We find it somewhat ironic that these same individuals typically do not question the presence of police and security measures elsewhere in society, such as at banks, malls, and other public places. It is a rather sad statement that some people in our society would rather protect their money and their shopping conveniences better than our children and educators!

If we believe (appropriately so) that violence in schools reflects violence from our broader communities, what better of a link can we have between crime prevention in the community and crime prevention in the schools than by having a SRO program and positive, meaningful school-law enforcement partnership???

Many SROs are law enforcement officers from local or county law enforcement agencies assigned to schools in cooperative agreements with education officials. A number of school districts also have their own school police departments. These officers are typically full-time, in-house school officers with police powers who are employed directly by the school district rather than directly by a law enforcement agency outside of the school district.

SROs should be officers who voluntarily wish to work with children in schools. School and law enforcement officials should be sure that SROs receive specialized training for working with children and in school settings. SRO programs should include formal agreements between school districts and law enforcement agencies regarding officer selection, funding, training, supervision, evaluation, and associated issues.