Page 428 - NIXBOOK

SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICER

After five years of D.A.R.E. anti-drug presentations I then transitioned to a full-time School Resource Officer, a special police
assignment that was becoming more popular and mainstream across the country, mostly because there had been a dramatic
rise in the number and severity of school shootings and massacres by deranged students. There was not enough funding for
both a DARE Officer and an SRO, and the school district wanted an SRO more than a DARE Office, and I was the best choice to
fill that new position.

Eventually most of the state’s DARE officers (maybe a couple hundred of us) became SRO’s because we were the kind of officers
who liked working with students already and the DARE programs were being slowly phased out.
But before that, it was still a kind of unusual thing to see
police officers in schools. When I first started spending time
at the high school and junior high it caused quite a stir
amongst the students but as the years went on they got so
accustomed to me that most of them wouldn’t even blink if
they came around the corner in the main hallway and just
about literally ran into me. Which was very different from
when I had been a student in that high same school 15 years
earlier; I had only seen one officer at the school one time for
a career day presentation; if a police officer had been seen just
hanging out in the main officer or hallway or classroom it
would have been a really, really big deal. Times change.

It takes a special kind of officer to volunteer work in the
schools with students. Most police officers could not and
would not work in the schools for a number of reasons, the main one was because they all thought it was beneath them and
none of it was “real” (traditional) police work. It was also difficult to adjust to dealing with teenagers and pre-teens, many of
whom could be quite obnoxious. There was also friction between the school principals and the officers in terms what kind of
discipline should be administered to the kids; invariably most officers preferred more punishment and the principals were
usually more lenient.
And just like being a DARE Officer, most of my coworkers considered my assignment
out of patrol as being less than impressive. As usual, I didn’t care what they thought.
Eventually, they all came around and more or less accepted the whole idea, mostly
because the SRO was the one who took all the reports at the schools about the kids
fighting or drinking or doing drugs or harassing each other – all crimes, yes, but not
as exciting as doing road work patrol. The chief had pondered letting me work in a
more casual uniform, like a polo shirt style, with less gunbelt tools, but I didn’t like
that idea, mostly because a lot of the kids were bigger than me and I liked the official
and maybe imposing look of carrying all the police gear I could.
I enjoyed working in the schools. The duty was relatively easy and it kept me on a day shift instead of a night shift which is what
I would have been stuck with since I was still a rookie officer with low seniority. And my days off were (of course) weekends,
which was really great. But during the summer school breaks I’d fill in for the patrol officers on night shift, and I continued to
do regular police patrol work on days when there was no school. So although I was a school cop, I did work patrol as often as I
could to keep my skills sharp. And if there were any car collisions involving local teenagers I’d handle those, since I naturally
became kind of protective about all the kids.
All of the kids who had been in the school district through elementary school and middle school of course already knew me,
and it was not uncommon to see my former DARE grads proudly wearing their black, red, or white DARE t-shirts to school.

I was assigned to the two elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. I decided to set up shop in the high
school; because those high school kids needed the most attention. I was originally put in with the school’s security staff (three
of them) in a back room but I managed to convince the principal to move me to a more visible location. I found a small supply
closet in the cafeteria that was used to access electrical circuit breakers. The loud humming coming from the metal boxes didn’t
bother me; I had the old boxes and chairs In there moved out and I had a desk brought in. I got the door cut in half so I could
open the top half and be approachable for the kids. I brought in an old giant red and blue police car lightbar and set it up on a
shelf in the back. It didn’t work but it did add to the ambience in there nicely.