Community Corner

Advocates Push for More In-School Police

Montgomery County residents and officials are calling for the return of a full School Resource Officer program in high schools and middle schools.

Montgomery County officials, police and parents are clamoring for the fiscal 2013 operating budget to restore police staffing in high schools to the levels seen before funding cuts decimated the program the past two years.

"Many of our high schools are virtual cities, many with over 2,000 students and hundreds of staff per school," said Susan Burkinshaw, co-chairwoman of the Safety and Health Committee of the County Council of PTAs. "We don’t need officers in our schools because our schools are not safe; we need officers in our schools to keep our schools and communities safe."

With recent budget cuts, School Resource Officers—a police officer stationed within high schools—have been limited to one officer per police district.

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With the exception of , which maintains a Gaithersburg city police officer at the school, the county's two dozen other high schools share six SROs. Schools independently hire security personnel, but that's not enough, said Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger.

"They don't have the authority nor the resources to help these kids that the SROs bring to the community," Manger told the council’s Public Safety Committee in January. "My concern is not just keeping crime out of the schools [or] having some place for the kids to report something that's going on. You can use security personnel to do that. But having the ability to follow up [with a police officer] does make a difference.

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"An incremental increase over the next few years would have huge impact in terms of our ability to deal with youth on so many different issues."

School resource officers assist with school incidents and meet with parents, teachers, students and staff to discuss emergency preparedness and public safety.

"A lot of this is being a friend to kids. [Officers] know what the schedules are of surrounding schools and when their lunch periods are," said Councilman Craig Rice (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown. "It's all about community policing, which goes so far beyond just having an officer walk through a community."

Because officers are in the schools and talking with students, they are much better positioned to prevent crimes before they happen, including after-school fights and drug and alcohol issues, Rice said.

"With this next operating budget I'm hopeful we'll be able to fund a full complement of school resource officers back into the school system," Rice said. Councilman Phil Andrews (D-Dist. 3) of Gaithersburg, chairman of the council’s public safety committee, has partnered with Rice in gathering information about the SRO program and is also hopeful to see it reinstated.

The council is working with Montgomery County Public Schools on a policy to address concerns of principals and administrators about how SROs are assigned and evaluated.

Under the direction of former County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D), and amid heightened concern for school safety after the attack at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999, Montgomery County applied for a federal grant to fund its first in-school officers, according to Burkinshaw, which began in 2002. It grew to involve six sergeants and 27 officers covering all 25 Montgomery County high schools and six of the county's middle schools.

Data released by Montgomery County Public Schools show that the number of serious incidents reported in schools has dropped by nearly 40 percent since the 2001-02 school year. A total of 136,832 students were enrolled in MCPS during the 2001-02 school year and 7,104 serious incidents were reported. In the 2010-11 school year, with 144,064 students enrolled, 4,475 serious incidents were reported.

The $2.6 million program was cut to nine officers in 2010. In 2011, it was cut to six officers, leaving one per police district, and renamed the School Resource Officer program, Burkinshaw said.

"There were a lot of questions about autonomy when it came to who would be in charge of the SROs and who would pay for them," Rice said. "Our police had to make a very difficult decision with putting more officers in the streets or increasing a presence in the schools."


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