Observations on SRO Responses

D

Double Naught Spy

New member
Not to hijack the other threads on arming teachers and whatnot thought I would include here what I have found researching School Resource Officer (SRO) responses to on campus incidents. I have intentionally not included incidents with SROs that were initiated off campus involving the SRO (e.g., http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2013/11/police-fatally-shoot-man-near-eugene-ore-high-school/) or incidents where LEOs happened to be on campus for other reasons and ended up in an event (Appalachian Law School). The focus here is on officers hired for the purpose of being on school premises to protect the people at the school (whether they are formally trained as specific SROs or simply serving in an SRO capacity based on being a LEO).

I was not able to come up with a lot of incidents, just 10 so far that involved actual attacks. Based on reading various news accounts, what I found what that when present, SROs certainly are able to respond to incidents much faster than external law enforcement that may be minutes or 10s of minutes away from the school. In short and with today's use of SROs (versus the old school use as employed at Columbine to contain, coordinate, render aid, and report), incidents are curtailed more quickly than when allowed to run their own course as officers respond externally.

So it would appear that having SROs is most definitely a very good thing, but is not without drawbacks. Putting SROs in every school is expensive (too expensive for many districts) and to actually provide adequate security, many larger schools would need multiple officers, but all need at least one. As Glenn noted in the other thread, deterrent value is hard to assess, and I would agree with that given some of the events here where SROs were known to be at the schools.

As noted in two of the examples below (Taft and Sparks), shooters are much more free to attempt their deeds of no SRO is present. At Taft, it was just a flaky deal. The SRO missed school because of being snowed in at home and the gunman happened to come that day. At Sparks, the district has a lot of SROs, 38, only they have 90 schools and no SRO was at Sparks. Having SROs in the district does not mean you have SRO protection at a given school if the SRO isn't at the school.

Two incidents were particularly interesting. They involved SROs that were the initial targets of the attackers. In both cases, the students targeted the SRO first and failed, both SROs being injured (Socastee and Carolina Forest).

In one incident, a student actually shot another student in front of the SRO and the SRO simply arrested the shooter (Carver).

Two of the incidents, Price and Carver, seem to have been limited murder-type attacks.

A total of five of the incidents involved the bad guys not just laying down and committing suicide due to contact with the SRO/resistance. These include Columbine, Socastee, Carolina Forest, Granite (shootout), and Sullivan Central. Watch the Sullivan Central video below, if you haven't seen it. Holy cow. The SRO certainly kept the gunman occupied for a LONG period of time and notice the lack of external police response...which would have been time he would have been free-roaming and killing.

Columbine High School (April 1999) SRO present but ineffective, largely due to tactics of the period, but actually performed appropriately and responded quickly as per the tactics of the time.

Arapahoe High School (Dec 2013) http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/1...aking-best-tactical-decision-during-shooting/

Price Middle School (Jan 2013) http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/20910523/photos-price-middle-school-shooting

Sullivan Central High School (Aug 2010) gunman killed by SRO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEDEi8ZZ--E http://www.tricities.com/news/article_35434f30-00d3-522f-98f1-58f372591713.html

Socastee High School (Sept 2010) SRO was first intended target of shooter, but missed and SRO who arrested the shooter.
http://www.carolinalive.com/news/story.aspx?id=665881#.UrrrVk7naM8

Carver High School (Aug 2013) One student shot another in front of the SRO who then arrested the shooter. http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/article_247ee7d0-11a4-11e3-b183-001a4bcf6878.html

Carolina Forest High School (Oct 2009) SRO attacked by autistic student with bayonet. Student killed. http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2012/11/15/3171768/police-officer-involved-in-carolina.html

Granite High School (Mar 2010) Police officer guarding school (and visiting deputy) engaged active shooter, shooting active shooter multiple times in gunfight. 5 victims other than the shooter.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93745

Taft Union High School (Jan 2013) SRO not at school when shooting occurred due to snow/ice. However, normally would have been there.
http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.c...support-officer-absent-day-of-school-shooting

Sparks Middle School (Oct 2013) district has 38 SROs for 90 schools (60,000 students), but apparently no SRO was at Risley.
Washoe County School District, where this latest shooting occurred, has 38 resource police officers on the district staff to serve the more than 62,000 students in more than 90 schools. None of the staff officers was on the middle school campus at the time of the shooting. According to the web site of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) the U.S. average is 1.8 officers per 1000 persons. The 38 officers of the Washoe County School District force is certainly within that national average.
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If they had 1.8 officers per every 1000 students, they would have had 112 officers, NOT 38. They would have had more than 1 officer per school and then maybe one officer would have been at the school. Hmmm.
http://guardianlv.com/2013/10/nevada-school-shooting-rekindles-gun-control-debate/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/21/justice/nevada-middle-school-shooting/

If anyone has insights into responses in other SRO-involved incidents, it would be interesting to learn what was involved. It is obvious from here that SROs and their activities are not any sort of cookie-cutter jobs. They don't just protect schools from mass or even Columbine style attacks, but sometimes odd attacks for which there were no recognized precursors. Not all the attackers are even students.
 
SRO's do a lot more than guard schools and are worth the money in my opinion. There presence prevents problems from ever getting out of control in the 1st place. Just for reference I taught for 30 years and was close to both of the SRO's we had during my time. The 1st we had was actually a classmate of mine, we graduated HS together. He had an opportunity to advance and became an investigator with the DA's office. His replacement was just as good. The SRO's at all 3 of our other schools were former students I taught earlier in my career. All are top notch.

Salary is divided between our local school system and the Police dept. It was about 60% paid by LE, 40% from the school board. During summers they worked as a regular patrolman. And these guys earned their money. All of them not only worked from 7-4 each day, but were present at all athletic events and other after school activities. They advise school administrators when legal issues come up involving students and sit in on meetings between parents and administrators when students are involved in some disciplinary actions.

Our county has 4 high school districts with most having the HS, Middle School, and Elementary school in the same location. Different buildings within sight of each other. We had 1 SRO for each district. His office is in the HS, but he regularly visited each school.

You have to have a unique set of personality traits to be a successful SRO, and all that I know are great guys. They don't put the hard charging young guys in schools. All of them that I know are older, experienced "father figures". The kids have loved and respected all of them. I've seen SRO's on many occasion take an interest in kids heading in the wrong direction and work with them. They have kept a lot of kids in school and out of jail.

Their biggest asset, if done properly is the contacts with regular LE. The SRO's are aware of situations brewing in the community that could spill over into the schools and are aware of which students are more likely to be a threat. This is something teachers simply have no way to know.

They also worked together with administrators and a few selected teachers on a disaster preparedness team. I had an opportunity to serve on that team the last 5 years I taught. The SRO provided lots of valuable insight from a perspective that teachers cannot provide about methods and tactics for us to use if something did happen. We had a comprehensive plan for dealing with school shooters or bombings.

As you can see, guarding the school from an attack is just 1 part of their job. They go a long way toward preventing stuff from happening in the 1st place. and just knowing someone is close by and armed is a huge deterrent.
 
I'm not against SROs. As noted above they do a lot more than play security guard.
The main drawback from what I have seen is SROs escalate discipline. Specifically no tolerance policies. When the officer responds to any incident as a matter of policy it is a little difficult to be flexible on some things. If you support no tolerance policies that isn't a negative, but I do not support no tolerance policies. Some districts may handle this better than the ones I have been exposed to.
They also intimidate. Even if they are "nice guys" they have a gun/mace/baton/taser visible and most police officers learn to use intimidating postures as a matter of course. This can be good or bad.

Having an extra person full time in all schools to sit around waiting for a shooting to happen is a foolish idea. Pay and benefits will be at least $50k. Almost 300,000 schools. That is about $150 billion dollars for one and you need two if you want to cover extra-curricula. I think I could find a way to save more teenagers lives with that much money.
 
I live in a small town, with a relatively small school district. We have 4 differenet school buildings. We have one resource officer. The school system allocates $180,000 per year for the officer and associated expenses. I'm not sure what ll that includes. The SRO is officially employed by the city PD, but school district pays the total expense during the school year after which he goes back on the streets.

When the officer needs to be located, the school often calls the PD for a radio dispatch, as he is difficult to locate in 4 possible buildings. He often accompanies studenst on field trips, and is not present.

I think for the most part, SRO's are a feel good measure, but on our case, are not very effective against the situations that created the desire for him. I think he would be more effective on patrol, and in amny cases could respond faster for an emergnecy that happnes in a building he does not happen to be in. I think the cost is a huge burden on a small school district. It's money well spent if it saves a life, but I'm not convinced that for all of the expense, he is better prepared to do that.

In other larger schools, where the threat of deadly violence from students is more common, it might be cost effective, but for the small town trying to be prepared for that 1 in a million crazed lunatic, I'm not convinced a SRO is a good use of limited resources.
 
What is the possibility of having retired military, police and trained civilians as non-paid volunteers SROs for schools?
Not just one or two per building, but squads working in rotation.
There must be a whole lot of folks willing and able to fill this role, without costing the schools much at all.
Just a thought??
 
Columbine HS: SRO assigned but outside of the building when the balloon went up. SRO in essence became just the first responder. Death toll = 13 (+ 2 shooters)

Aurora, CO: SRO assigned and present. Death toll 1 (+1 shooter)

Sandy Hook Elementary School: No SRO assigned. Death toll = 26 (+1 shooter, + shooter's mother)



Clearly, if the goal is not to be a social worker but to prevent deaths in the event of an attack on a school, the SRO is ineffective unless he/she is on-site. Jurisdictions (including most in my state and I believe all in my county) all have fewer SROs than they have schools, so the SROs rotate through the schools. The odds are, then, that an SRO will NOT be present if/when an attack takes place.

If the purpose/intent is to prevent deaths from an attack, such "rotating" SRO assignments are nothing but "feel good" measures. Like the TSA providing "security" for air travelers, it's nothing but security theater. And security theater is a waste of time, effort, resources, and taxpayer (my) money.

As "tone deaf" as Wayne LaPierre's statement ("It takes an armed person to stop an armed person") came across as a result of his (poor) timing, the truth of the statement is incontrovertible. However, the reality is that most places throughout the U.S. do not have the monetary resources to afford a full-time SRO for each and every school in a district. And some schools, particularly the campus-style facilities in some western and southwestern states, probably need at least two full-time SROs to provide even minimal coverage.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm pretty certain that it isn't SROs. IMHO the direction should be making the buildings more resistant to hostile entry, providing some sort of armed reaction force at the [protected] front entrance, beefing up security of individual classrooms, and compartmentalizing larger buildings so that a shooter could be trapped in a corridor between roll-down security screens.
 
Yep, SROs are expensive, but apparently fairly darned effective and events at schools are not one-in-a-million. Mass shooting events are relatively rare, no doubt, but other types of shootings and attacks are not.

There are less than 150,000 schools in the US including colleges and about 2 mass or attempted mass events at schools each year on average in the last few years, plus lots of other events.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84

The problem with volunteers, as anyone who has run a volunteer program knows, is that volunteers rarely show the reliability necessary to maintain stable coverage as individuals over any sort of long terms basis, and certainly not without a management plan in place to do so. Additionally as volunteers, may be opening themselves up for lawsuits that would not be covered by the schools or districts.

Plus, volunteers would be mostly non-LEO certified and hence not legally able to carry firearms on most campuses across the country.
 
DNS said:
There are less than 150,000 schools in the US including colleges and about 2 mass or attempted mass events at schools each year on average in the last few years, plus lots of other events.
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I did a double-take on that number, because I thought it was MUCH higher. However, according to multiple sources I turned up, there are in fact around 132,000 to 133,000 K-12 schools in the U.S., including both public and private.

If we use 132,500 as the number and assign ONE school resource officer to each (no allowance for back-ups, rotation, sick days or vacation coverage), at a hypothetical annual total wage package per officer of $60,000 per year (which is probably low considering the benefit package most LEOs get), we come up with a cost to "society" (that's us, folks) of $7,950,000,000.

That ain't lunch money ... that's a SERIOUS expenditure.
 
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Thanks for double-checking. I hedged a bit in case school numbers had increased significantly since the study I cited, but apparently they had not.

Yes, that is a huge number, but it is widely spread across the country. Cities and states are not apt to put SROs into private institutions and will leave them to self fund such endeavors as many already do. Anyway, such a budget concern would be comparable to each school adding 1-2 new staffers...as schools often do.

Employees cost money. They always have.
 
I know our system allocates $180,000 for resource officer, but I don't know what all that includes. Its certainly not his salary.

Do you know, is that number of schools, the number of school buildings, or school systems?
 
That is a huge number. By the time you add salary, PERA, insurance, training, equipment etc it is somewhat cost prohibitive. I would much rather see teachers or other staff volunteer for the training similar to the armed crew member system the airlines use.

Not to open a new can of worms but I think our education system is broken to the point where these kids have no concept of real world consequences or decision making.
 
That is a huge number. By the time you add salary, PERA, insurance, training, equipment etc it is somewhat cost prohibitive
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That number would include all of that. A lot of school districts have quite a few SROs as noted above. $180k per year seems awfully high per officer. I would like to see the stats on that information and then how places like Washoe County can afford 38 such officers.
 
At one RSO per school the number turns out to be almost $25 billion. In a failing economy and with a failing school system I believe this is going to result in higher taxes which will mean parents will have to work more and spend less time with there kids teaching them right from wrong. Also more debt for the kids to eventually pay on for the rest of their lives. This is just not sustainable.

I have school age children and I understand something needs to happen but this is not the answer when the alternative of training and arming teachers is not only much cheaper but much more tactically effective. An unknown number of armed teachers would be much more effective than a known security officer.

For a little perspective, $25 billion is about 3 times what we spend on children's cancer research. About 15,000 kids get cancer every year and around 2000 die.
 
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