By Joe Angelino

A new school year is upon us and already there’s been violence reported. Last week there was yet another student-on-student fatal shooting in a public high school, this time in Spokane, Washington. Without trying to sound insensitive, the Spokane incident involved only one killed and three wounded. This may not even make the FBI’s list of school active shooter incidents and it is being dealt with by local authorities as a simple crime of murder.

Coincidently the same day closer to home, the Sidney High School and police department were dealing with a non-specific threat of violence by gunfire that turned out to be false. The Sidney type incident plays out with near daily regularity all over the United States thanks to social media spreading rumors like wildfire. Adding to the authenticity of social media gossip is the police investigation itself. When the police show up, the most far-flung rumor now has added credibility of a law enforcement scrutiny.

Often a school violence incident, even far distant, will be followed by a knee-jerk, loud call for cops in the local schools. In a school setting the teachers and principal should be the authority figures. I was never in favor of permanently assigned officers to specific school buildings. I preferred that any officer on patrol could stop in any school building during the school day to chit-chat, be seen and if the timing was right, sit down for lunch. That procedure was much more relaxed, gave the opportunity for all officers to participate, and did not diminish school official’s disciplinary clout in the eyes of students. But, to have an officer permanently assigned to a school just didn’t sit well with me for a variety of reasons.

First off, school buildings are the safest place a parent could ever leave a child, particularly the schools in our area. A school is a cross section of the surrounding community; meaning whatever is happening in the community to some extent is also happening in our schools. Because we all live in a very safe part of the country, our schools are inherently safe. They aren’t perfect, but they’re certainly not dangerous. We do have occasional issues of larceny and drugs, but those are few and seldom do we experience violence.

There are other reasons to not have permanently assigned officers in schools. From a police administrator’s perspective, the practice of the same police officer reporting for duty at a school building on a daily basis can sometimes cause the officer to forget to whom they are accountable. Cases of school principals being perceived as the defacto police chief in the officer’s eyes are common. This makes the officer’s already difficult job even more so.

Then the issue of having someone with arrest authority in a school building is just that – cops can arrest people. Having a police officer in such a close proximity only makes the likelihood of judicial intervention that much closer. Some people call this the “school to prison pipeline” that puts the at-risk youth population even deeper into the risk category. And there’s always the chance an officer will arrest a youth that is not in the at-risk category for a one time offense thus giving him the label of a criminal long before that should be happening.

At a time when New York State lawmakers declared 16 and 17 years olds officially as children, it seems school administrators will be better positioned to deal with misdeeds in school buildings. Leave the call for police as a last resort for the most serious cases. New York’s recent Raise the Age legislation has given school boards and administrators the perfect time to empower their teachers and other employees to deal with disruptive youth. This will raise the respect and stature for teachers to a point it once was in the past. Hopefully not so far into the past current teachers have forgotten they were once the end-all of student misbehavior.

This will require parents to be on board with another adult meting out discipline in their absence. Remember, discipline is NOT punishment; discipline is education to change behavior. Parents may need to look in the mirror and ask themselves what they did wrong with their child rearing as opposed to asking why the school doesn’t mind their own business.

A police officer should not be used as the school’s big stick unless there is a big crime committed. If I were the parent of a school aged child I’d rather a professional educator deal with my child instead of an assigned uniformed police officer walking the halls making on the spot corrections. There is clear evidence that arresting school students causes an increased potential for them not to graduate, which later will impact employment and educational opportunities with the spiral continuing downward.

And finally, if the real reason for an officer in a school is about safety, the first prerequisite would be an un-safe school. I’m not thinking of a school with an isolated criminal incident or the occasional fisticuffs, but a truly dangerous school. Presently there are dangerous schools in Suffolk and Nassau County, NY with squads of police officers assigned daily. The local police agencies on the Island are being backed-up by New York State troopers in the battle against gang violence. The most dangerous of these gangs is the MS13 group that no teacher or school principal is trained or equipped to deal with. These gang plagued districts may not want officers in their schools, but they do need the officers in their schools.

Nobody wants their school to be an armed camp. I cringe at the thought of metal detectors and bag searches at school entrances. For the occasional need of police presence at a school in our area, the administrators know they can call their respective law enforcement agency for timely and appropriate response. The case for permanent uniformed police officers in schools is always a decision by a local school board, if that is what they WANT. Just be thankful we don’t NEED them here.

If you have a comment, complaint or compliment you are welcome to leave it in 140 characters or less on Twitter @josephangelino.