School safety, security, and violence prevention resource

There are many different opinions when it comes to keeping schools safe, we all know that.  One way of thinking that has gathered strong support is having police presence in school campuses.  There are various reasons behind this principle but I do believe that the main idea is that with police presence highly visible in school campuses, the tendency for violence is nipped at the bud.  The mere presence of police officers patrolling the school grounds serves as a deterrent for many school children who might have some anti-social or violent tendencies to act on them.

That is why the Vallejo City Unified School District fought long and hard to keep the police presence in their high school campuses.  In fact, even the police department did their part in making the deal go through.  Both parties – the schools and the police – have had recent drastic budget cuts.  One implication of these cuts is that the number of police officers that are deployed to the school grounds was reduced.  While it used to be 8 officers for the 4 public high schools of Vallejo, it was reduced to 6 officers.

The fiscal set up was that the police department paid a certain percentage of the police officers’ salaries while the school district covered the rest.  Everything is fine now – they have struck a deal and the remaining 6 officers will be staying on as school patrols.

Is this really such a big deal?  Should we really push for police officers in campuses?  Aren’t occasional police patrols enough to keep the safety? One argument that I thoroughly agree with is that police offices dedicated to patrolling school campuses have the advantage of knowing the terrain better than the average officer who patrols the city.  If an emergency does arise, the dedicated school patrol officers would be better equipped to pinpoint the source of disturbance and therefore handle it better and quicker.

Regarding the idea that police officers in campuses act as a deterrent to potential violent acts, I think that it holds true as well.  Some may raise questions such as “What about potential police offenses?”  My answer to that is this: “Shall we remove an effective method of keeping children safe just because of a few incidents involving improper police behavior?”  If so, then entire police departments should be removed from every city!

Seeing things in the proper perspective is the key.  Not everything is perfect but if something works, then it should be taken advantage of and measures should be done to improve the system, don’t you think so?

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Posted on June 2nd, 2008 by Deborah J Thomas
Filed under: Administrators, High School, News, People Involved, School Grade Level, School Safety Issues, Security, Violence