Police Officers Essay

Police officers are often portrayed as the protectors of the people, however, recent media attention has portrayed them as violent and abusive of their power in non-violent situations. Whether it be in a small town or a big city school district these incidents of violence have been the center of recent media attention. However, there have been recent incidents of police brutality within school districts, elementary and high school levels, which furthers the poor conversation of Student Resource Officers (SROs) in general. There are children growing up that are becoming exceptionally defiant and difficult to control in the learning environments. This has led to a point where parents have no control over their children. If parents is incapable of taking control of their children, how are the teachers expected to handle their defiance when the children clearly do not respect authority of any kind? Evidently, it has come to a point where these resource officers are being called into the classroom in hope of dealing with these defiant children. An SROs primary job is to prevent juvenile delinquency, provide law enforcement-type services, investigate allegations of criminal incidents, and to make referrals for students to juvenile authorities when found necessary. Are Student Resource Officers abusing their power with this job description? Well trained SROs should be used to control any violence and drug use, not to intervene in a situation that a teacher is capable of handling. Student Resource Officers are a great resource to schools of all grade levels, but their power is being abused because some are not trained. …show more content…
Officers should not be called into a classroom to handle minor infractions between a student and a teacher. The officers should remain within their job description and not interfere in minor infractions which a school official is completely capable of handling. They should only be present in classrooms for emergencies and safety reasons. SROs are an exceptional addition to the school campuses all around, but trained or not, these officers should never result to physical repercussions on a student unless deemed necessary. The officers should be thought of as a positive reinforcement because these officers are both mentors for students who have failed at being on the right path, along with being added security to the students’ school communities. No parent would willingly send their child off to school not knowing if their child is going to be safe or not. There has always been a big push for the advertisement of schools having safe learning environments, but a lot has changed after the many school shootings.
Parents want to send their children to school with peace of mind and knowing they are safe. Over the years a rise in school shootings has challenged the belief of a true “safe learning environment.” There have been 142 school shootings in the United States since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, making it approximately one shooting incident a week (Carissimo). Having the added security of SROs on all grade level campuses helps alleviate the stress of the unknown. In addition, the SROs are law enforcement personnel who focus primarily on grades K-12 school campus duties, also including the prevention of juvenile delinquency (Guerra). The primary roles of these officers are to provide law enforcement-type services to a school that encourages everyone to follow all of the school regulations. SROs investigate allegations of criminal incidents and make referrals for students to juvenile authorities when found