WAMU 88.5 (NPR)
Police at D.C. schools to serve twice as many schools
By Kavitha Cardoza
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Click here to listen to the clip: http://wamu.org/audio/nw/10/01/n3100105-31322.asx
Metropolitan police officers will now serve as School Resource Officers in public charter as well as traditional public schools. Chief Cathy Lanier says the approximately 100 officers will continue to work as School Resource Officers. But they'll now work with more than twice as many schools, from 39 last year to 88 schools this year.
Lanier says schools close to each other will share SROs and some schools will have "roving" SROs who will visit at least once a day. Lanier was asked whether having almost the same number of officers serving so many more schools would weaken security at traditional public schools. She says no.
"It's really important that officers are not seen as a fixed post inside the school, that's never been their job. They've always been responsible for home visits and going inside and outside the schools," says Lanier. "So I don't think anyone is losing anything here. I think this is just more of a team approach here, we're just bringing in the charter schools."
Part of an SRO's job will include mediating conflicts, and visiting chronic truants at home.