Amid growing calls for reform in police practices across the country and school discipline in New Hampshire, the role of the school resource officer is receiving some renewed scrutiny, including in Concord.
In a list of recommendations to the Concord School District June 22, a social justice task force that was gathered to analyze the racial climate in city schools recommended removing any resource officers — armed, uniformed police department employees who are stationed in schools.
Across the country, some large city districts including Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle and Portland, Maine have voted to remove police from schools in recent weeks, amid protests against police brutality and the death of George Floyd, citing discomfort with an armed officer and links to a “school to prison” pipeline.
“I think the ultimate issue is that it is a law enforcement role,” said Mattison Howard, a rising senior at Concord High School. “I think we have to ask ourselves if it is really appropriate to have this armed law enforcement in our schools.”
In early June, following Concord’s Black Lives Matter protest against police brutality, Howard, 17, started a Change.org petition to the Concord School Board that called for the end of the school resource officer program. It has been signed by 152 people.
Howard said her decision to start the petition was based on conversations she has had with her Black peers in recent weeks about law enforcement, and studies she has read about arrests of students that creates a cycle of recrimination that’s often referred to as a school to prison pipeline.
“As a student myself I can say that I do not feel comfortable with an armed police officer in my school,” Howard said. “Schools are supposed to be a place of education and having an armed police officer definitely makes me feel unsafe.”
School resource officers have a “triad role,” in New Hampshire schools, according to the state Department of Safety, where they act as law enforcers, educators and informal counselors. Having an officer in a school is intended to build positive relationships between students and law enforcement, and address behavioral issues.
Politicians often call for increasing the numbers of officers in schools after high-profile school shootings like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 to keep students safe.
However, schools with SROs tend to refer more students to law enforcement for disciplinary action, and for lower-level offenses, according to a 2016 study by Jason Nance published in the Washington University Law Review. Students who have been arrested at school are less likely to graduate and more likely to be back in the criminal justice system later in life, Nance said. Nationally, Black students are more than twice as likely as their white classmates to be arrested at school, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In Concord, school and police officials cited the benefits of school resource officers who work at both Concord High and Merrimack Valley High School.
“SROs are vital in our efforts to build trust and legitimacy in our interactions and relationships with our community’s youth,” Concord Police Chief Bradley Osgood said. “The presence of a SRO can provide a sense of security for students, faculty and staff, decrease the need for the school to call 911 for emergencies and may prevent or minimize vandalism and injurious behavior.”
The Concord Police Department has one school resource officer stationed at Concord High School, and two assigned to the Merrimack Valley School District.
New Hampshire had approximately 60 resource officers stationed in schools in the 2018-2019 school year, according to the Department of Safety. However, public information officer Paul Raymond said there is no definitive data, .
“Some schools have multiple, some don’t have any,” Raymond said. “There is no defined number, and no way they are tracked.”
The New Hampshire Department of Education also does not keep data on the number of school resource officers that are stationed in New Hampshire schools.
The exact role an officer takes in school is determined locally by the school districts and police departments.
Concord’s resource officers are present in school buildings every day of the week during normal school hours. They are armed and uniformed, though the uniform is a “softer,” more dressed-down version of attire a patrol officer would wear, with utility pants and a polo shirt.
Concord High School Principal Mike Reardon said the role of school resource officer Brendan Ryder is to build positive relationships with students and be someone they can turn to with a problem.
“Yes he’s a police officer, but his ultimate reason for being here is to assist students in accessing their education,” Reardon said. “The fundamental idea is that they are here as a resource to kids, to create not a school-to-prison pipeline, but a dialogue in a non-threatening way in a school building so that things go more smoothly outside of a school building, so that kids see police officers as human beings and not as just a kind of imperial threat.”
Reardon said he is aware of suggestions to remove the officer from high school and disagrees with the proposal.
“You can’t talk about school resource officers as a group and say, ‘they all have to go.’ That has its own very palpable and inherent bias,” Reardon said. “I know there may very well might be issues with this whole concept nationwide, but here at Concord, I would be loathe to lose someone of his ability and nature. He adds so much to our building.”
The Concord Police Department and Concord School District have a memorandum of understanding to share the cost of the resource officer’s salary.
Soon after officers get assigned to a school, they take a five-day course of basic school resource officer training. Concord Police Department also sends its SROs to a school resource officer conference each summer.
“I think the SRO is a great opportunity for any police officer. It’s a great assignment to have and it is a great learning experience,” Osgood said. “I like to have the officers have the opportunity to experience policing in a different way.”
By state law, school districts must alert local police to cases of drugs, alcohol, vandalism, stealing and fighting at school, and Concord High School handbook says they can involve police in the student discipline for these misbehaviors. They can also be involved in cases of setting off a fire alarm.
“The SRO is typically the lead person on these incidents in hopes that the connections he has made with the students and ability to identify [and] speak to the student may assist in deescalating the situation,” said Concord High School assistant principal Tim Herbert.
Concord High School’s officer only deals with incidents at that school. For a problem at Rundlett Middle School or any of the elementary schools, a different patrol officer from the department would be sent to handle it, Osgood said.
Police may also get involved if a student doesn’t remain 1,000 feet away from school grounds while serving time during an out-of-school suspension, the policy said.
Officers aren’t always consulted for matters beyond student discipline.
For example, high school officials never alerted Concord High School’s former resource officer in 2018, when school officials received reports of former teacher Howie Leung kissing a high school student in a car, according to former superintendent Terri Forsten. Instead, school officials conducted their own investigation, which was eventually forwarded to the state Department of Education. State officials altered police, which ultimately led to Leung’s arrest on sexual assault charges involving another student.
In a June 29 meeting of Concord’s Public Safety Advisory Board, Osgood said he would not recommend reducing or eliminating Concord’s school resource officer positions. He said they have been a huge benefit to the patrol division and the whole department.
“We’ve had a very successful SRO program in the Concord School District for two decades,” Osgood said. “They’re a resource not only for the students but for the faculty and staff, as well.”
In January, the Concord teachers union requested, via a letter to the school board, that the administration increase the number of school resource officers in the district and place one in every school to help handle physical and verbal violence teachers say they have been receiving from students. The violence, mostly in the preschool to elementary school levels, was making teachers feel unsafe at work, the letter said.
James McKim, president of Manchester NAACP, acted as an advisor to the task force when coming up with recommendations for making the district more racially equitable. He agrees the role of the officers should be examined but isn’t fully on board with removing the officers entirely.
“I think there may be some valid reasons to have an officer who is there to watch over and protect the school and to help with discipline,” McKim said. “The whole effort needs to be scrutinized very carefully to make sure that the original intent and the actual needs are being met in an appropriate manner.”
Concord administrators will continue to examine current discipline policy and its impact on students of color in the months to come. Concord High has plans for major reforms of its traditional discipline system, including a move to a restorative justice model.
“Neither one of us negates the reality that some students in our schools may have had interactions with police officers that have left them feeling a certain way, and then they see a uniformed officer those feelings come back to them,” Herbert said. “But at the same time, I think having both parties at the table and having dialogue around that is probably going to be more beneficial than taking a carte blanche, ‘they all have to go’ approach.”