{"id":42939,"date":"2018-03-22T13:32:54","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T20:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=42939"},"modified":"2018-03-22T13:32:54","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T20:32:54","slug":"school-resource-officers-can-prevent-tragedies-but-training-is-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/school-resource-officers-can-prevent-tragedies-but-training-is-key\/","title":{"rendered":"School resource officers can prevent tragedies, but training is key"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nDespite\u00a0legitimate concerns<\/a>\u00a0about the effects of placing school resource officers in the nation\u2019s schools, the reality is having these officers on a school\u2019s campus can literally save lives and avert tragedy.<\/p>\n

That much became clear on March 20, when school resource officer Blaine Gaskill\u00a0rushed toward a shooter<\/a>\u00a0who had opened fire at Great Mills High School in Maryland. He effectively stopped the shooter, who had already wounded two students.<\/p>\n

Gaskill\u2019s heroic work stands in stark contrast to that of Deputy Scot Peterson, who was seen on video footage standing outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as the school shooting there was underway. At Marjory Stoneman, 17 people, mostly students, were killed on Feb. 14.<\/p>\n

So why do some resource officers perform so well while others don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

The need for training and standards<\/strong><\/h4>\n

What makes a school resource officer successful, though, isn\u2019t only about how they respond to emergencies. In fact, a critical part of their role is in prevention. Stopping school violence before it ever begins relies heavily on the training that school resource officers, commonly referred to as SROs, receive or don\u2019t receive.<\/p>\n

I make these observations as the\u00a0director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center<\/a>\u00a0and as one who has\u00a0co-authored a technical report<\/a>\u00a0on campus violence prevention and response to active shooters.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, there are no national standards \u2013 and in many cases no state standards \u2013 for school resource officer training. That means there is little consistency\u00a0in how SROs are prepared<\/a>\u00a0to work in schools.<\/p>\n

While school resource officers have already undergone regular police training, SRO training that exists tends to focus on legal issues or school security,\u00a0as opposed to other things<\/a>\u00a0like de-escalation techniques, bullying and cyberbullying, child development, symptoms of trauma, or educational issues, such as working with children with special needs.<\/p>\n

How school officers could make things worse<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In my opinion, this lack of training is one of the factors that is fueling the debate over the use of police officers in schools. The U.S. Department of Education has recommended that school resource officers not be involved in school discipline, as inadequately trained officers\u00a0may inadvertently escalate problems<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0criminalize<\/a>\u00a0students and contribute to what has come to be known as the \u201cschool-to-prison pipeline.\u201d This is a particularly sensitive issue when it comes to dealing with minority and disabled students.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Deputy Ben Fields garnered national attention when a cellphone video emerged of him appearing to\u00a0body slam and drag<\/a>\u00a0a female student across a classroom at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina. Such incidents force us to question the wisdom of putting police officers, particularly officers not trained to work with children, in American high schools.<\/p>\n

To complicate things further, one study that\u00a0examined the impact<\/a>\u00a0of SROs found that their presence in schools was not all good or bad. For instance, while arrests for disorderly conduct increased, arrests for more serious offenses decreased.<\/p>\n

And yet other studies suggest how positive an influence school resource officers can be. Research on almost 2,000 students found that youth who had positive opinions about police officers reported\u00a0feeling safer<\/a>\u00a0in schools with SROs present. In a study in which researchers\u00a0interviewed dozens of SROs<\/a>, officers themselves tend to emphasize the importance of informal discussions and education, instead of being overly reliant on formal discipline, whenever possible.<\/p>\n

Training is emerging as key in helping SROs successfully increase school safety, as recognized in a U.S. Department of Education\u00a0guide on improving school climate and discipline<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cA Framework for Safe and Successful Schools<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet despite a high level of consensus among researchers and criminal justice experts that school resource officers should undergo specialized training,\u00a0few of the 19,000 SROs in the United States are in fact trained<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Different training, different outcomes<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Gaps in training could also explain the difference between the responses in Florida and Maryland.<\/p>\n

In \u201cCampus Violence, Prevention and Response<\/a>,\u201d a 2008 report that I co-authored, my colleagues and I recommended that campus officers should all be trained in active shooter response tactics. In an active shooter situation,\u00a0as my colleagues and I argued<\/a>, campus police need specialized equipment to gain forcible entry into locked buildings and classrooms. This is different from traditional training, where police may be instructed to wait outside. Their staffing levels need to be adequate for the size and layout of the school.<\/p>\n

But our report also made recommendations about prevention. A key recommendation was that school personnel need to be trained to identify students at risk.<\/p>\n

The Parkland school shooter clearly demonstrated many such warning signs. This is one of the reasons why police there are reviewing\u00a0why all these warnings<\/a>\u00a0did not suggest a significant pattern to local police.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong>Elizabeth Englander is a Professor of Psychology, and the Director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) at Bridgewater State University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite\u00a0legitimate concerns\u00a0about the effects of placing school resource officers in the nation\u2019s schools, the reality is having these officers on a school\u2019s campus can literally save lives and avert tragedy. That much became clear on March 20, when school resource officer Blaine Gaskill\u00a0rushed toward a shooter\u00a0who had opened fire at Great Mills High School in […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":42940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[185103],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-42939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-school-resource-officers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSchool resource officers can prevent tragedies, but training is key - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/school-resource-officers-can-prevent-tragedies-but-training-is-key\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"School resource officers can prevent tragedies, but training is key - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Despite\u00a0legitimate concerns\u00a0about the effects of placing school resource officers in the nation\u2019s schools, the reality is having these officers on a school\u2019s campus can literally save lives and avert tragedy. 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