SROs do not prevent crime, increase student misconduct, exclusivity

Kentucky schools are required to hire and train enough school resource officers (SROs) needed to place one at every school by Aug. 1 as a result of an amendment to the School Safety and Resiliency Act made during the state Legislature’s 2022 session.

While having an officer on duty at every school may make many feel more at ease, research and anecdotal evidence provide virtually no support to the claim that schools are less likely to experience a mass shooting or other crime with an on-campus officer on duty.

Kentucky House Bill 63 was passed by the state Legislature and signed into law by Governor Andy Beshear during the 2022 legislative session. The timing of the amendment might lead some to believe 22RS HB 63 was proposed in response to the recent string of heavily publicized active shooter incidents, beginning with the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24.

However, the bill was proposed last September in response to the Marshall County High School shooting in 2018, in which 15-year-old Gabe Parker murdered two of his classmates and injured 14 others in Marshall County, Kentucky.

At the time of the shooting, Marshall County High School had an armed resource officer on campus. Despite the presence of an SRO, before the shooting, Parker could move freely around the school carrying his father’s pistol to ensure he did not choose a location where he might injure one of his friends or where the officer would be able to stop him.

After emptying the pistol’s clip, Parker discarded the weapon and ran to the school’s weight room, pretending to be an innocent bystander, hiding with other students, all while avoiding detection by the on-duty SRO.

Parker was only caught because another student hiding in the weight room witnessed the shooting and was able to identify him to a teacher, who called external law enforcement. Parker was arrested by the Marshall County Sheriff’s Department and confessed to the crime.

The Marshall County High School shooting should be used as anecdotal evidence of the ineffectiveness of on-campus officers. Instead, it led the state government to require every school in Kentucky to have one on-duty.

School resource officers were also on-duty for the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999, the 2018 school shootings in Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Texas, and many others.

In fact, Uvalde Elementary School had multiple armed SROs on duty at the time of the May 24 shooting. After the shooter had already been firing an AR-15-style assault rifle outside the school for around five minutes, one of these officers confronted him on his way into the building but did not prevent him from entering — or even exchange gunfire.

Beyond anecdotal evidence, an increasingly large amount of peer-reviewed research has been done to determine the effectiveness of SROs. A small number of studies have shown decreased crime rates in schools with on-duty officers, suggesting officers may be beneficial in some specific instances. However, the overwhelming majority of research shows that the presence of SROs either has no effect on student crime rates or is linked with increased student misconduct.

Schools with SROs are likely to experience significant increases in exclusionary punishment such as suspension and expulsion. School districts that have removed on-campus police forces have seen drastic reductions in the number of such punishments.

Further research has shown that the presence of SROs can lead to a significant increase in student arrests for minor crimes such as disorderly conduct or simple/attempted assault. One study estimates that students are five times more likely to be arrested for disorderly conduct when SROs are employed by their schools.

Resource officers have arrested students for throwing paper airplanes, refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance and burping in class. The last two “crimes” were committed by middle school students.

For many parents, an on-duty SRO will bring an unwarranted piece of mind, but for others, the presence of an SRO will result in a criminal record for their children because they were bored in class. Even if charges are not pursued after an arrest, those children will have to report the incident when applying for college and certain jobs, giving them a serious disadvantage on such applications.

Beyond tarnishing a child’s permanent record or placing them in harm’s way by taking them to jail, the looming threat of being arrested causes significant stress in many students’ lives. Several studies have found evidence of SRO misconduct and abuse toward students in some schools, as well as a decreased feeling of inclusivity among students, pitting different groups against each other based on how SROs interact with them. These groups could be based on racial or financial boundaries. However, it is also common for officers to single students out based on personal bias and past incidents.

The presence of SROs in Kentucky schools would not be a serious concern if it were not for the negative impact officers may have on their schools and the major funding hurdle that many schools in the state are currently struggling to surpass, all while 29 of the state’s 171 school districts do not even have the funding needed to employ a single school nurse.

While it may not be entirely clear how to eliminate school shootings and other violent crimes in school, it is clear that SROs will not accomplish this goal. SROs will instead overburden schools in less wealthy areas, resulting in little more than increased arrest and misconduct rates for school-aged children.