Do We Really Need an SRO?

Do we really need an SRO?

In today’s parlance, an SRO isn’t standing room only but a school resource officer (SRO) which is sort of like police officer light.  Nearly all SRO’s are armed and the few who aren’t carry restraints such as handcuffs.

The original idea for the SRO was to provide protection and support for students and staff from school violence, whether that violence originated within or without the building.   In theory, the SRO has some additional training in how to work with adolescents, although there are also school districts with an SRO in elementary and middle schools.  But about half of the resource officers said they had any specialized training to deal with kids with disabilities and 20% said they had no special training to deal with students at all.

Opinions differ as to whether the SRO is a mentor to the students or an extension of law enforcement.   Sometimes one SRO may rotate between several schools.  In Maryland for instance 328 of the 439 SRO’s in the state were assigned to one school, the remaining had multiple schools.  The call for more SRO’s increases whenever there is a mass school shooting.  People seem to think that more SRO’s in a building will keep more students safe.  Yet there was an SRO in Parkland and he didn’t keep anyone safe.  Additionally, large high school buildings simply can’t be covered by one person and the chances of that one person being exactly where an invasion is happening are not great.   In Maryland, schools must have SRO’s OR “adequate police coverage” whatever that is.  In practice, that usually means sheriff deputies, regular patrol officers in the area or others who can provide emergency responses.   Some of the larger school districts in the country actually have developed their own school police forces.  The thought is that in this way school districts can control hiring and training.  But there is little evidence to suggest that an in-house police force is any better at containing violence or understanding the students’ needs.  

Most school districts have a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the agency that employs the resource officers.  Usually these memoranda delineate just when the SRO gets involved in student discipline.  In most instances they are not to get involved in routine student discipline or low level crimes, but only at times of violent crimes or felonies.

It is not clear if there have been any quantitative studies to see if the presence of an SRO actually helps student safety or creates a culture of “gotcha”.  The anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that the benefit of the SRO is a reflection of the attitudes of school administrators.  

Black Lives Matter advocates call attention to the figures that show Black students are arrested by SRO at a rate that is sometimes 20% HIGHER than percentage of Black kids in the school.  They ask is this just a new opening in the school to prison pipeline?

So do schools need an SRO and does their presence really make a school safer?   It appears that their presence has led to a decline in rapes, robberies and physical attacks.   On the other hand, it appears they do little to reduce school shootings the primary reason they were initially placed in schools.  Is the cost of an SRO worth the price or could that money be spent on more social workers or counselors?  Independent of the presence of an SRO, the amount of school violence has decreased over the past 20 years.  

Uniformed officers, SRO presence, metal detectors, bullet proof glass and circulating panda cars might make some families and staff feel safer, but does learning occur more easily in a war zone or in a place where kids are known and seen and not afraid.