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Sunday, September 19, 2010

Police Announce New Program to Liaison with High Schools

Department of Police Media Services Division:

Montgomery County Police Begin SRO Program for 2010-2011 School Year

Beginning with this new school year, Montgomery County Police are initiating a program utilizing nine “School Resource Officers” to serve as liaisons with high schools in their police districts. School Resource Officers (SROs) reflects the name that is more commonly used nationwide for officers who regularly work with schools.

In this new program, SROs are expected to handle the following responsibilities:

• Assist school staff members to enhance safety within their assigned schools and serve as liaisons between the department and the school staff for police-related concerns and incidents.
• Respond to incidents occurring in and around their assigned schools during their shift hours.
• Set up regular meetings with parents, teachers, principals, other school administrators, and students to discuss issues of concern within the school.
• Act as a resource for and assist with emergency preparedness, as well as safety awareness education geared to high school students.
• Serve as a point of contact to deliver police department programs on such topics as conflict resolution and mediation, drug and alcohol awareness, violence prevention, gang awareness, and crime prevention.
• Assist with traffic safety and enforcement activities in and around their assigned school areas.
School Resource Officers will work out of their district stations. The nine officers are being assigned as follows:


4 comments:

  1. How is one officer going to cover five schools? Ridiculous. This is a fraud being played to bamboozle the public.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What would you have the school system do? There isn't any money. If they pay for an officer in each school they'll have to cut spending from somewhere else in order to afford said officer. Where would you have the funding come from?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ireland: The police positions are being funded by the County budget, not the school systems budget. The school system is getting over 53% of county taxes at a time when tax revenues are way down. If the school system thinks police officers in schools are a priority then the Superintendent can look to the MCPS Operating Budget and see where there can be savings.
    The savings could help the county pay for the police officers.

    For example, would it help to put ALL procurement contracts out for competitive bids?

    What about the 1,400 credit cards that are floating around MCPS? Necessary or luxury item?

    How about consultants? Does MCPS really need so many consultants that it would take over 22 hours to count them all? (See previous post.)

    A few less consultants for MCPS could put the police officers back in the schools. But that's not the priority.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Ireland. There is no need for an officer in some high schools. But they are trying to make the public believe that some officer is going to run around and cover five schools which is impossible.

    Just tell the truth and assign an officer to the high schools that need an officer and forget the rest.

    ReplyDelete

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