Police presence in area schools gets positive reaction NH.
Cops in School Police presence in area schools gets positive reaction First of two parts By ASHLEY SMITH, Telegraph Staff asmith@nashuatelegraph.com Published: Sunday, Jul. 9, 2006 When a high school senior in Maryland found a human foot in his freezer, he hatched a plan with his girlfriend to tell one other person. It had been a year since the young man heard a gunshot in the night and awoke the next morning to see his father scrubbing the floor with bleach, officer Don Bridges of the Baltimore County Police Department said. The father’s girlfriend was reported missing a week later. Police searched the man’s home, but one place they didn’t check was the freezer, Bridges said. The teenager was afraid to talk about what he had seen, so the case went cold. The day after finding the foot, the young man didn’t show up at school. But his girlfriend did, and she followed through with the plan to report the grisly discovery to Bridges, the school resource officer. “A kid came in crying and was visibly shaken,” Bridges said. “She refused to talk to the principal or guidance counselor. She personally requested to speak to me. Our chief, after that case, immediately saw the benefit of having officers in school.” That was five years ago, when the idea of uniformed officers working in schools was catching on throughout the nation. Although the concept has been around in some form since the 1950s, it has only really taken off within the last decade, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers. The catalysts haven’t been as dramatic, but local schools have also embraced the concept. Police say the program is more than a mechanism for catching and punishing troublemakers: An officer is assigned to a school to act as a teacher and mentor, keep the school safe and bridge the gap between a community and its police force. In Greater Nashua, eight of 11 high schools have an officer assigned to the building. There are two at each Nashua high school and one who circulates through the middle schools. Hudson, Amherst and Londonderry have full-time officers working at their high schools and middle schools. High schools in Pelham, Merrimack and Litchfield also have full-time SROs. Milford has an officer stationed at the middle school, and police hope to implement the program at the high school in the coming years. Police chiefs in the three local towns that have a high school but no SRO – Hollis, Wilton and New Ipswich – say they would like to implement the program but are limited by budget constraints or lack of support from local school boards. Community partners In the mid-to-late 1990s, President Clinton set aside billions of dollars for community-oriented policing programs, including school safety initiatives. The Cops In Schools grant was created in 1999 to fund school resource officer programs across the nation. The program provided funding for the officers for a limited time, after which the community would have to pick up the cost or eliminate the SRO. No area communities have discontinued their programs after the federal funding ran out. Milford was a grant recipient, converting its DARE officer to a full-time SRO in or around 2000, police Capt. Chris Nervik said. Londonderry initiated the SRO program in the late 1990s as part of a national shift from reactionary to preventive methods of policing, Capt. Bill Hart said. About a third of Londonderry’s population is located inside a school building when school is in session, so officers need to be there to be in touch with the community, Hart said. “The school resource officer program, especially for a town like Londonderry, is one of the best ways to become a true partner in your community,” Hart said. Hudson initiated the program slightly earlier, in 1997. Nashua is the only local community that had school resource officers prior to the 1990s. The attack at Columbine High School in 1999 was a major catalyst for the program, NASRO President Phil Bailey said. The nation’s perception of school safety was shattered when the suburban Colorado high school was the setting for the deadliest school attack in history. Locally, Merrimack jumped on board. “After Columbine, we kind of shot right in,” said Officer Michael Murray, who was assigned to the high school in 2000. Litchfield initiated the program in 2001, shortly after Campbell High School opened. Some opposition In 2003, the Bush administration set aside an additional $41 million in grant money. Several local towns asked their school boards for permission to apply for the $125,000 stipend, but the idea was met with some resistance. Some parents, staff and students were uneasy about an officer carrying a loaded gun in school, or thought their school was safe and didn’t need a full-time police presence. When New Ipswich police Chief Garrett Chamberlain proposed hiring an SRO that would split time between Mascenic Regional High School and Boynton Middle School, the local school board voted the plan down. Former Hollis police Chief Richard Darling applied for the grant in 2004, but not before Hollis/Brookline High School students submitted a 500-signature petition against the plan to hire a school resource officer. The school board eventually gave Darling the OK to apply, but his department wasn’t a recipient. When the idea was proposed to Souhegan’s Community Council – a body of students, faculty and townspeople that advises the school board – it was voted down. The council later reconsidered after a rash of thefts, vandalism and drug issues, and officer John Smith got the job in September 2004, despite some lingering concerns. During his first year, at least one staff member said she still didn’t like the idea of a loaded gun at school. But several others said Smith was a natural fit at the school and that students were comfortable with him. His interaction with kids wasn’t just about making arrests: Smith established a Students Against Destructive Decisions chapter and volunteered to coach the boys tennis team. According to Bailey, a shift in public perception often happens after a school resource officer program is implemented. The community gets to know the officer, sees him or her at baseball games or school plays, and looks at him or her as more than just a badge and a gun, he said. Different approach The success of a school resource officer program all comes down to the SRO’s philosophy, according to educational consultant Bill Preble. If an officer sets out to build relationships with the kids, earn their trust and identify problems before they escalate, the program is positive. Preble, a professor of education at New England College and president of a Henniker-based educational consulting firm called Main Street Academix, first encountered school resource officers when he started working with Maine schools on a project to combat harassment and violence. He was surprised to find that SROs were taking a less reactive approach to discipline than the schools, Preble said. When a fight breaks out, the kid who lashed out physically has often been repeatedly bullied or teased by the other person. That dynamic is often lost on adults, who sympathize with the bully, but SROs tend to recognize the pattern early on, he said. Bailey, of NASRO, says school-based policing is the fastest-growing area of law enforcement, particularly because it puts police back in touch with the community – something that was lost after cops shifted from walking the beat to patrolling the streets in a cruiser. With other types of policing, 95 percent of an officer’s interaction with the public is adversarial, Bailey said. Not so with school resource officers, he said. “In usual police work, an arrest is a positive,” Bailey said. “School resource officers, we look at arrests as a negative. Somewhere along the line an adult failed to realize a problem. Arrests do happen, but they’re last resorts.” Howard Muscott, co-director of New Hampshire Center for Effective Behavioral Intervention Strategies, an agency that helps schools develop safe and productive learning environments, said the SRO program works best when an officer isn’t there just to catch and punish kids. “If the officers are there as a real resource and are student friendly and are able to prevent problems . . . it can have a great, positive effect,” Muscott said. “I’m not sure that any punitive program has been proven effective.” Officer Jason Downey, who works at Alvirne High School in Hudson, agreed that SROs have to develop a balance between being a mentor and an authority figure. When it comes to making arrests, they have to pick their battles. “If my job was to arrest juveniles and get stats, I wouldn’t want the job,” said Downey, who just completed his first year as Alvirne’s SRO. Part of Downey’s job is to speak to kids about topics such as drugs and alcohol at the request of teachers. He’s periodically asked to teach a health or driver’s education class. Next year, he’s resurrecting a job-shadowing program for kids interested in law enforcement careers. He spends some of his time just talking to students – organizing discussion groups to squelch rumors, or chatting with kids who stop by his office to report a bullying incident or a potential fight, Downey said. Officer Pete Forgione, one of two school resource officers at Nashua High School South, said he has an open-door policy. Kids can drop by and talk with him about anything they want. He gets a lot of questions about police work – even the occasional, “Why do you get free doughnuts at Dunkin’ Donuts?” Forgione also speaks to classes at the request of a teacher. “I like the interaction with the kids during my teaching,” Forgione said. “I like the opportunity to bridge the gap with these kids, eliminate the urban myths about police.” ENLARGE PHOTO Making it work Not every SRO program has been a wild success. Although most of Preble’s experience with school officers has been positive, he remembers visiting one central New Hampshire high school where the officer didn’t have the proper training and focused solely on discipline. Preble didn’t name the school. “He was wrestling kids and tackling them to the ground in the hallways in front of other kids, and it wasn’t working,” Preble said. According to Bailey, the program doesn’t work without training in counseling and education. In New York, cops are often pulled off the streets and assigned to a school without that knowledge, he said. “Like a new pair of shoes, they look good, but they don’t fit real well,” he said. SROs are supposed to be some of the most well-educated people in law enforcement, Bailey said. In Alabama, they’re required to have a four-year degree and frequently take training courses once on the job. Bailey looks for SROs with a certain type of personality: officers who will take ownership of the school, developing a loyalty to the school’s football team or band. The right candidate also needs to be able to negotiate with students and offer incentives for making the right choices, he said. When a student commits a criminal offense, sometimes an SRO will work out a deal to drop the case if the student keeps his or her grades up or gets to school on time every day, Bailey said. Several local police departments have similar policies. Nashua has a diversion policy that keeps first-time juvenile offenders out of the court system if their parents agree to pay a fine and the students agree to a contract outlining behavioral and family expectations. The idea is that young people who are labeled delinquent in court are more likely to reoffend, according to a published report from The Youth Council, a Nashua nonprofit that developed the program in partnership with Nashua District Court and police. Hollis has a similar program, called alternatives to arrest, despite not having an SRO in the high school. Hudson and Merrimack also have diversion programs. Despite the success of the SRO program, there will always be people who don’t like the idea of an officer in school, Bailey said. Some parents say they’ll never be comfortable with a loaded gun in school, he said. “Are there going to be opponents to police officers anywhere? Yeah,” Bailey said. “Those people you’ll never convince.” But parent complaints are rare these days, Bailey said. The program is thriving in southern states such as Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Texas, according to Kevin Campana, executive director of NASRO. It’s also strong in New Jersey, Arizona, Massachusetts – and New Hampshire, he said. Even police officers who once looked down on the job have changed their minds, Bailey said. The job used to be dubbed “school retirement officer,” based on the perception that being assigned to a school wasn’t real police work, he said. Now there’s a waiting list to get a position in the SRO unit he supervises. Ashley Smith can be reached at 594-5860 or asmith@nashuatelegraph.com. http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060709/NEWS01/107090131/-1/CLASSIFIED