A Fort Bragg police officer will soon get a new job working on local school campuses with badge, gun, and a bag of educational materials that might include a few smiley faces.
A Big Brothers Big Sisters grant will now provide $100,000 per year for the next three years for the city to hire a School Resource Officer, or SRO. Getting an SRO has been a priority of new Fort Bragg Police Chief Mark Puthuff.
The city and Fort Bragg Unified School District received word last week from Wendy Wall, who runs Big Brothers Big Sisters, that a Title II grant application has now been fully funded. The BBBS grant came in earlier this year but without funding for an SRO officer.
“We kept pitching our case to get the rest of the grant,” said Puthuff.
“Having the school resource officer is critical, from a mentor standpoint and an educator-facilitator standpoint.”
The SRO is a modern concept of positive policing that Puthuff is familiar with from his days in Stanislaus County, where a half dozen sheriff”s deputies worked for him full-time at 22 schools, with a serious gang problem.
“We don”t have that demographic or that kind of a problem here yet,” he said.
But Puthuff noted rising numbers of incidents at the middle school and said the presence of an SRO can help keep the tide from turning.
He said most of the problem at a school, even a large one, is usually created by just 45 to 60 troublemakers. The officer being inside the school will get to know those kids and work with the school to keep them out of trouble. But if crimes are committed, they are also there to make that arrest.
While officers do enforce the law, their main role is as mentors, facilitators, educators and problem solvers, Puthuff said.
“The School Resource Officer will complement other programs that are funded by the Title II grant to get high-risk youth engaged in fun, supportive, healthy activities,” said Fort Bragg Unified Schools Superintendent Steve Lund. “The Gang Coalition” should be credited for their success in finding funding for these programs and the School Resource Officer.”
The school board has a finalist for the position of principal at Fort Bragg Middle School who also has experience working with a School Resource Officer. Principal Marli Shoop is retiring at the end of the year.
“This grant will allow maximum flexibility in relation to the assignment. Potentially the SRO could help us at all schools, being an instructor and strengthening a positive relationship between our local law enforcement agency and our youth,” Lund said.
The new SRO will be chosen from among Fort Bragg”s finest, Puthuff said. He is currently looking among his officers for that person. He hopes that the SRO can get started in one to two months.
“This won”t be somebody who has a I”ll do it if you want me to” [attitude],” Puthuff said. “This will be somebody with a passion for this job who can get out of the box and develop a non-traditional, collaborative approach to community policing and enforcement.
“This will be someone who really cares about the kids and young adults they will be dealing with.”
Fort Bragg police have pursued a Peace Grant for a school officer but have struck out in that effort two years in a row. After losing out to Willits two years ago, locals tailored their application to the way Willits wrote theirs, but that effort also failed.
That grant would have restricted the SRO to Fort Bragg High School and a half-mile radius. The BBBS grant does not have any such restriction, which makes it much better in the eyes of Puthuff.
He feels it is crucial that the SRO be able to go to the high school and middle school, as well as the younger grades. The thinking is that proactively educating elementary school kids about the dangers of methamphetamine, gangs and other criminal activity can help prevent problems in later years. Relationships are forged among youngsters, the police and the entire community.
Along with BBBS, the city and schools, organizations involved in the effort to get an SRO include the Mendocino County Youth Project, Project Sanctuary and Safe Passage Family Resource Center.
One of the biggest concerns of all involved is what happens after the three-year grant runs out. In that case, the city would have to pay the $100,000 bill or cut the position. Puthuff said the planning and documentation needed to keep the grant funding would start immediately.
“We are going to be a success, and we will have the statistical data to back up the successes,” Puthuff said.
History of SROs
The concept of a School Resource Officer program originated in Flint, Mich., in 1958. School officers were quantified in federal law in 1968 as needing to be sworn police officers who educate and well as arrest. There are now more than 3,800 school resource officers on duty on a given day in the United States, according to the Justice Department.
Studies in Kentucky and Virginia have shown that SROs do make a difference in making schools safer and provide benefits for all students.
Mark Benigni wrote in the FBI Bulletin that SROs are one of the most effective ways of keeping kids in school and out of the justice system.
“While some practitioners proclaim graduated systems of discipline, training for teachers, and modification of zero-tolerance policies, I recommend ? school resource officers (SROs). This approach requires a fundamental belief that school violence does not exist — all violence is community violence. Communities need collaboration between schools, police, and the juvenile justice system,” Benigni wrote.
Benigni surveyed school superintendents, police supervisors, principals, and SROs from 10 communities.
“Respondents believed that a qualified SRO provides law enforcement, as well as law-related, counseling and teaching. All respondents in the study perceived that SROs fill an important role in their schools and all students can benefit from their presence.”
He said rich and poor schools had very similar attitudes about SROs.
“SROs should meet with the in-school suspension group during the day for a period of group law-related counseling. Students are less likely to get in trouble if they understand and appreciate the consequences of their behavior beforehand”.
