Do you think any good can come from forcing school resource officers into schools?

40 hours is already laughably little. Colonial cops are already undertrained and notorious for excessive force and police brutality, and then they only need a week of superficial cliff notes for them to be unleashed onto defenseless kids. Madness.

Call them what they are – they are policemen / cops / deputies. The whole euphemism of “SRO” is bullshit. They want to put cops in schools.

Having said that, some schools – particularly middle school and high school populations – NEED to have someone who can keep order. Not just teen guys – teen girls carry knives and cut other girls as well. I think that there have been enough gang sort of events in schools that a policeman is a good idea.

Of course, training is essential. You don’t want a kid shot for chewing gum. I don’t know what the magic number of training hours is – there are experts who know that.

But the concept of police in schools—that decision took place 20 years ago and has been proven correct time and time again.

I was growing up when putting security in schools was just starting. I found it to be laughable in the beginning when they were hiring rent-a-cops to patrol things. Half the “cops” were out in the woods smoking pot with the kids. But later on, it got serious. Metal detectors coming into school for a brief period, cops patrolling…it was weird, but there were fewer bullying events and kids were better behaved for a while.

My kids had an SRO at their school. He was a police officer that was assigned as the SRO. He wasn’t the biggest of the toughest guy I’ve ever seen, but he dealt well with the kids and gave the cops some inside intel on who the real troublemakers in the community were.

I don’t think a feel good course will make or break how good the SRO is. It comes down more to temperament.

My daughter’s schools here all have SROs, which some are in uniform and some are not. All the schools in my area have locks on all the doors, and ours has bullet resistant glass on the windows. You have to be buzzed in through multiple doors to get in.

I am a 20 minute ride from Newtown/Sandy Hook where 26 kids were killed about 10 years ago. The area I live in is horse and lake country, very affluent. In 2011, the average household income was over 160k a year, not urban at all, but neither is Newtown/Sandy Hook.

The cops in the school are great. The uniformed ones are regular full time cops but their full time assignment is the school. There is a lady cop (uniformed). They are inside and outside, and they also give the kids trainings on school safety and stuff like that. They’re not bullies and they’re not dumb.

A few months ago, there was a murder about three towns over (a domestic incident) and the killer was on the loose. All the schools in the area were on lockout. The guy was caught within a few hours. Times like that, I am very grateful to have cops on the school property.

I’ve seen some videos of pretty violent things SROs did to girls acting out in unprivileged districts. I think thorough training in de-escalation techniques is warranted at a minimum.

I had an officer in my high school in the 1980’s. I don’t remember his exact title. We all liked him. I didn’t feel apprehensive around him or like I had to worry he would catch me doing something wrong. I guess that is partly because I didn’t do much wrong and my school allowed us to leave campus for lunch, so kids could walk in the halls almost all day and even out to the parking lot and no one would easily know if you were skipping or not. Do resource officers even concern themselves with truancy and skipping class? I thought of him as being able to break up a fight if one broke out more than anything. I don’t remember if he had a gun.

Training is important, I have to agree, but I would be fine with them starting training simultaneously with starting their jobs, especially if they are unarmed and basically just security guards and just their presence is a deterrent for bad behavior. Maybe have at least one day before actually in the school with very basic do’s and don’ts.