CHICAGO — With a rapid increase of school resource officers (SRO)—or law enforcement officers assigned to schools full-time—over the past two decades and a lack of federal and state oversight of them, delegates at the Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates adopted policy aimed at ensuring school districts that choose to employ SROs explicitly define their roles and responsibilities within the context of the school team.
Specifically, the new policy calls for school districts to develop and maintain an up-to-date Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that clearly outlines processes for officer selection and assessment, defines roles and responsibilities of SROs and their scope relative to school personnel, identifies data to be collected, and establishes a mechanism for program evaluation and oversight.
“With tragic school shootings all too commonplace nationwide, more than half of all schools across the U.S. now employ full-time school resource officers. Given the vagueness of federal law and a patchwork of state laws, there are wide variations in the role, expectations, and accountability of police presence in schools,” said AMA President Jack Resneck, Jr., M.D. “Should a school district choose to employ school resource officers after considering the risks and benefits, we believe that clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of school resource officers and considering them as part of the school team at large will better equip them to help keep students and school faculty safe.”
The AMA Council on Science and Public Health report that served as the basis for this policy outlines the benefits and concerns of SROs. Some proponents view SROs as the first line of defense against school shootings and other acts of school violence, as well as promoting school safety and addressing the root causes of student misbehavior. A major concern cited by opponents of SROs is that having law enforcement officers in schools could escalate minor misconduct and impose criminal punishments for misconduct that could be better handled by the school. The new policy helps to address these concerns by calling for law enforcement in preschool to 12th grade schools to focus only on maintaining student and staff safety and not on disciplining students.
The policy also supports efforts to address physical and mental trauma experienced by children in preschool-12th grade by eliminating disproportionate punitive disciplinary actions and the involvement of law enforcement in student discipline—helping prevent more students from becoming part of the school-to-prison pipeline. The policy also supports community-based policing practices as essential for a successful SRO program.
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