Police in our schools
Published March 7, 2016
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, March 6, 2016.
Friendly and distant. Reassuring and suspicious. Kind-hearted and heavy-handed.
If you listened to speakers at public forums last week on school resource officers in Guilford County, you heard all of the above to describe them. Stories of compassion and discretion. And stories of excessive force and overreactions.
One parent at the forum in High Point said an officer slammed his son to the floor after mistaking a seizure for a threatening action. “Do they know anything about how to handle a disabled child or what to do for them?” asked the parent, Ronald Daughtridge of Jamestown.
Yet a student at the meeting recalled being grateful for an SRO’s presence in his school when a man armed with a knife was caught near the school.
“If a teacher was the only thing there to stop that guy, I wouldn’t trust it,” said Trevor Burkholder, a junior at Penn-Griffin School for the Arts.
The role law enforcement officers play in public schools has been debated for years. Some critics would just as soon remove them altogether, especially from middle schools. They worry that the presence of SROs leads to too many student arrests and suspensions, especially of African American males.
It’s a valid concern. So are accounts of too much force and too little judgment. Video footage in 2015 of an SRO in a Columbia, S.C., high school overturning the desk of a disruptive student, with her in it, and then dragging her across the floor, comes to mind. That officer ultimately was fired, as he should have been.
But why was he called to that classroom in the first place? And are SROs protectors or disciplinarians? Or both? And if so, should they be?
First, putting to rest the most basic question, SROs should remain in Guilford County high schools and middle schools. They can not only protect campuses from intruders, but from inside threats as well. In 2013, a 19-year-old Dudley High School student beat her math teacher so severely that he passed out and nearly died.
In 2015, a 17-year-old High Point Central High School student was charged with rape and strangulation after allegedly assaulting another student.
Further, since SROs essentially are cops walking a beat, this, ideally, should build the rapport that comes with familiarity. This, in turn, should enable officers to defuse some situations before they escalate and help to quell misapprehensions about police as the enemy.
But the system could benefit from greater clarity on the roles of staff and faculty versus officers. Any situation that wouldn’t require a 911 call if police weren’t stationed on campus shouldn’t require an officer’s attention even if there is an SRO. School staff should handle it. More training that addresses the unique challenges of SROs also makes sense.
Finally, it’s important to address the underlying causes of school discipline problems. This is a harder, more complicated question. But it has to be a part of the conversation.
