Number of SROs doubles in state |
On Board Online • September 23, 2019
By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief
Anthony Omoruan, 32, is proud to be one of 200 new school resource officers who started work in public school districts in New York State this year.
The seven-year member of the White Plains Department of Public Safety was selected among 20 applicants for his posting at the White Plains City School District.
"It was an honor," he said. "Being an SRO used to be viewed as a step before retirement. Now it's seen as a really important role. You have to pay attention. People expect you to notice if a kid is more quiet. There may be bullying or risk of suicide."
The number of SROs in the state has doubled to about 400 since Jan. 1, according to Brian Forte, executive director of the State of New York Police Juvenile Officers Association (SNYPJOA), which includes SROs.
School districts' interest in having an SRO "has significantly increased after the Parkland and Colorado STEM school shootings," Forte said. He recalled that there was also a surge in hiring after the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, funded by federal grants and a three-year State Police program.
SROs are employed by a law enforcement agency, and their salaries are partially or completely covered by the school district(s) where they are assigned. In some cases, municipalities fund the positions.
SROs should have at least three years of law enforcement experience, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers. "They should have a strong desire to develop positive relationships with youth on a daily basis," according the association's website. "Their service records should contain no disciplinary actions or complaints involving youth."
Being an SRO is considered a form of community policing, in which police are expected to get to know the people in a given geographic area, form relationships and exercise discretion.
An SRO must fulfill three major roles, according to Ed Schmidt, training director for SNYPJOA. "You're a law enforcement officer, you're an educator and you're a counselor," he said.
And, sometimes, an SRO becomes a one-person social services agency. Devine Leacock, an SRO in Cattaraugus County, used his personal money to buy a pair of winter boots for a needy student last December.
Perceptions of SROs vary, Leacock said. While public perceptions tend to be positive, "some parents feel like, if you have a police officer, the school must not be safe and I don't want to send my kid there. Some think we're there to harass."
Opponents to SROs include the Alliance for Educational Justice, which seeks to end the "school-to-prison pipeline," and a civil rights organization called the Advancement Project. In a 2018 report called We Came to Learn: A Call to Action for Police Free Schools, the two organizations asserted that police presence in schools has had a disparate and negative impact on students of color, students with disabilities, and students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex or asexual (LQBTQIA).
"School policing is inextricably linked to this country's long history of oppressing and criminalizing Black and Brown people and represents a belief that people of color need to be controlled and intimidated," according to the report.
Others are concerned about how an SRO affects the fate of students who get into trouble for various reasons. Schools with an SRO had nearly five times the arrest rate for disorderly conduct than schools without an SRO, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based group.
SROs say their work is about giving kids a chance, or multiple chances, to make better choices. "The idea from the beginning of SROs is to try to keep kids out of the system," said Schmidt, the training director.
However, he added, "there are situations where you absolutely should make an arrest."
SROs are also concerned about the perception that law enforcement interacts disproportionately with minority student populations. At a SNYPJOA conference held in Lake George in August, a two-hour session on "The Impact of SROs on School Culture and Climate" focused mostly on developing racial and cultural sensitivity.
The session was led by Brian Bailey, superintendent of Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Central Schools. He started by testing the cultural diversity in the room by asking for a show of hands. "Has anyone in your family been a veteran?" (Almost everyone.) "Do you self-identify as being mixed or multiracial?" (A handful.) "Have you ever experienced oppression or rejection because of your culture or race?" (Perhaps one in 15.)
"Being culturally competent is a process, not an endpoint," Bailey said.
SROs who attended the SNYPJOA conference described themselves as extroverts who are eager to connect with students of all types.
Different SROs find different ways to do that. John Doughtery, SRO in Andover Central School District in rural Allegany County, formed a trap skeet team last school year.
The skeet team has attracted a cross-section of students including a group of young men who weren't particularly athletic and were just squeaking by academically. Because they need to maintain a certain grade average to remain part of the skeet team, their attendance and grades have improved, he said.
SROs are expected to gather intelligence from students, and they say this isn't hard to do.
When a food fight was planned for the last day of school in the Liverpool Central School District last year, SRO Richard Helterline heard about it from 10 students.
So he was able to prevent the food fight, right?
Nope. Despite an attempt to separate and isolate certain students in the lunchroom, the food fight occurred.
"I thought it was pretty funny, but I couldn't let that show at the time," Helterline said.