Officer hired for Dillard Middle
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on March 4, 2015 1:46 PM
The Goldsboro City Council approved a request from Wayne County Public Schools this week to add a temporary, full-time school resource officer at a local middle school.
The item, which was added after the official release of the council's agenda for its meeting Monday, sought approval for the hiring of the officer for Dillard Middle School. He starts work today.
The operation agreement, which was presented to the council by Goldsboro police Chief Jeff Stewart, cited a concern over "increasing violence in the Wayne County Public Schools."
After the item was approved, Alvino Daniels was assigned to Dillard, where he will work until June 30.
Daniels is not new to the area, said Sgt. Paige Learnard, who will be supervising Daniels until he completes the school resource officer training.
"We're very excited to have Alvino down there because he grew up in the community and actually went to Dillard Middle and has kids in the system," she said. "It's a really good situation. Our other resource officer, Michelle Warren, will still be a roving officer in the other schools and Alvino will go back to shift work at the end of the school year."
Assigning a school resource officer to Dillard was not initiated by the police department, but rather by Wayne County Public Schools, Mrs. Learnard said.
"From my understanding, there was an increase in incidents at Dillard Middle," she said.
Wayne County Public Schools security coordinator Chris Barnes said the school district would prefer to have a resource officer everywhere if possible.
"About a year or year-and-a-half ago, the state put out grant money for resource officers," Barnes said. "Our district was able to hire four resource officers, but three went into the county because they're so spread out, so we've only had one for the city. We wanted to get another officer into the system to help her out."
The request comes on the heels of an incident at the school in late January.
A fight between two students at Dillard resulted in assaults on both assistant principal Jamel Jones and a Goldsboro police officer, the resource officer, Michelle Warren.
The fight, which involved two fifth-grade students, reportedly took place in the assistant principal's office.
The fight broke out before classes began and escalated to the point that law enforcement was notified and two GPD officers responded.
Mrs. Warren sustained a broken finger during the altercation, and the principal's office was damaged.