The new school resource officer (SRO) recognized the weight and shape of a handgun through a teen’s jacket pocket. The 17-year-old boy had his hand poised over the pocket as he stood in a school office while two administrators attempted to search him for marijuana that February day in 2021.
Officer Mary Thoroman of the Sarasota County (Florida) Schools Police Department stepped between the boy and the administrators and placed her hand on her sidearm. A standoff began. She asked an administrator to summon the school’s other SRO.
Thoroman put her de-escalation training to work, calmly advising the boy to keep his hand out of his pocket. After a few minutes, she succeeded. The boy handed over his jacket, from which the SRO removed a loaded, 9 mm pistol.
Thoroman was already in the office because an assistant principal had contacted her via the school’s two-way radio system on the way to remove the boy from a classroom. A teacher had previously reported to the administration that the boy smelled of marijuana. Together, Thoroman and the administrator escorted the boy to the office. It was there, when the teen refused to hand his jacket to the assistant principal, that Thoroman noticed the signs of a gun.
During the ensuing investigation, the student remained uncooperative, Thoroman told NASRO. A different student, however, advised officers that he believed the suspect intended to shoot him, because the two students allegedly had an ongoing dispute over drug territory. The suspect student claimed to have found the gun on the road on the way to school.
Prior to this incident, Thoroman was unfamiliar with the suspect, but that’s not unusual in a school of 1,300 students. In addition, it was her first academic year in an SRO position, after becoming a certified police officer in 2001.
The boy eventually pleaded “no contest” to juvenile charges. A court sentenced him to 15 days in a juvenile detention center.
There is, of course, no way to know what might have happened in the absence of an SRO, but it’s entirely possible that Thoroman prevented a shooting that day. In fact, in a very similar situation in a Kansas high school in 2022, a student opened fire in a school office, wounding an administrator and an SRO who had just entered the room.
“If our school system didn’t have an SRO program, it’s possible that the administrators in our office might not have noticed the danger until it was too late,” Thoroman told NASRO. “And even if an administrator noticed the gun,” she continued, “they would have had to call 911 and wait minutes for a patrol officer to respond.”
Do you have a similar SRO success story? If so, contact NASRO PIO Jay Farlow, [email protected].