Sheriff steps up number of officers at public schools
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on March 1, 2018 10:38 AM
The Wayne County Sheriff's Office has stepped up the number of school resource officers at Wayne County Public Schools, according to a Wayne County press release.
Effective immediately, the sheriff's office is using part-time, reserve and other full-time deputies to make sure schools are adequately staffed with officers, according to the release. Sheriff Larry Pierce said that he could not disclose the exact number of new SROs due to security concerns, but that every WCPS school would have a resource officer every day.
"It will not necessarily be the same officer every day, because we have to work around our staffing and work schedules in terms of who is available that day," he said. "But they will be at every school every day."
Deputies will also begin routinely patrolling school campuses while on duty, according to the press release.
Pierce said that while the increased SRO presence is in direct response to the shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, earlier this month, the changes have been a long time coming.
"It's just something that I personally have been after for a long time now," he said. "I will be sitting down with the school board and with the county commissioners soon to talk about ways we can improve school safety."
Pierce has already had some discussions with both groups about how to make school safer. Proposed ideas have included more cameras, fences around school campuses and building-wide locking mechanisms which a principal could activate with a push of a button.
"Some of our problems are caused by the schools' age," Pierce said. "Our newer schools were built with this issue in mind, but some of our older schools are much more open, because they were built before recent years."
That specific concern was one of the major driving factors behind the construction of the new Meadow Lane Elementary School, which will have a more enclosed campus with far fewer entrances than the current building.