No one has been immune to the racial unrest that has plagued our country over the past several years. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year at the hands of the police served as a flashpoint for many to begin discussing different levels of reform to address systemic racism. However, it also exacerbated community dialogue questioning the need for a police presence in schools.
Data shows that well-designed, well-trained school resource officers who follow best practices as established by NASRO lead to less arrests at school, less student violence, less property damage, and an increased feeling of safety for students and staff. These officers are carefully selected, specifically trained, and properly equipped to serve not only as a law enforcement official, but also a mentor and a teacher for children. They actively work to bridge the gap between young people and law enforcement. However, not all school systems train their SROs to NASRO standards or even follow best practices, meaning that data from around the country can be fractured and paint an inaccurate picture of the role of SROs in schools.
In 2018, police in Lincoln, Nebraska partnered with researchers at UNL along with Lancaster County Human Services and the Lancaster County Attorney’s Office to begin tracking information pertaining to youth engaged in the juvenile justice system to gain a clearer idea of how the roles of SROs were positively or negatively impacting the school system.
Lincoln Police Officer Luke Bonkiewicz was approached at the beginning of the study to establish a way to evaluate SRO performance annually. To do this effectively, he said, they had to gather more data.
“There’s some research out there, but we wanted to put together a comprehensive evaluation plan,” Bonkiewicz said. “The plan we put together looked at the number of things – we tried to include how many calls for service went on at middle and high schools. Who initiated those calls? What happened – did they result in a citation? That’s the origin of this study. We have a bona fide university researcher evaluating what happens to the juveniles when they get cited by an SRO.”
The department partnered with Dr. Richard Weiner, the director of the Social Psychology program at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, to track and analyze this information. Bonkiewicz says this is part of an ongoing effort by the Lincoln Police Department to make sure that policies and procedures are evidence-based.
“For general public – if I was a parent and I had kids in a school, I would want those school resource officers to be evaluated,” Bonkiewicz said. “I would want to know that the SRO program is effective. I would want to know if that SRO program was intentionally or unintentionally sweeping kids up who didn’t need to be cited, students of color. It is so important that if there is an SRO program in schools, there is some sort of annual evaluation of the impact it’s having on students, teachers, administrators and the general public.”
The preliminary results, based on 18 months of data, are positive. Out of the 2500 children tracked, only 30% of those who entered into the juvenile justice system were referred by a school resource officer. Out of that 30%, more than half were referred directly by school faculty and staff, meaning that the SRO role is functioning as it is supposed to instead of SROs being treated as disciplinarians.
The most encouraging part of the study? Students who were cited by SROs were more likely to be diverted than to be arrested. This means students were more likely to be referred into counseling, drug rehabilitation services, or other special services, rather than be issued a citation and/or taken to jail.
“I’m following the data,” Bonkiewicz said. “If the data is identifying problems, we need to address those. If it’s going in a good direction – we are appropriately diverting kids towards programs instead of juvenile detention centers and we have low recidivism, then we’re doing what we’re supposed to do.”
Bonkiewicz says school resource officer programs, when utilized correctly, are important for schools.
“Even if police officers were not in schools, the schools would still be calling because there are school calls that require a law enforcement officer,” he said. “We’re not there to enforce truancy or because little Luke won’t sit down in his chair, we’re there in a law enforcement capacity. If we’re going to be called to the schools, we want our officers to have a relationship with the students, the teachers and the administrators before that call happens. We want SROs to be just that -- a resource.”
Without SROs, Bonkiewicz says, patrol cops would instead be expected to handle those calls. He says as a patrol cop, he may not have the skills, abilities, or experience that an SRO has to interact with a juvenile in a positive manner.
“We’re going to be in the schools for calls of service, so why not in advance build relationships?” he asked.
Bonkiewicz said in the past year, only 5 juveniles were sent to a detention center and they were for offenses that ranged from sexual assault to aggravated assault.
“I think that this study is only one part of our larger evaluation plan. We are studying things like racial disproportionality – that’s important, we need to evaluate how SROs might be impacting students of color,” Bonkiewicz said. “What we are finding is that less than 1% of 1% of kids are actually going to the detention center because of SROs.”
Photos courtesy of the Lincoln Police Department