NASRO Calls for Increased Funding from Department of Justice
The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) receives grants from the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
The National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) requested increased funding from the U.S. Department of Justice during a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
NASRO, a nonprofit organization that provides training for school-based law enforcement officers, school administrators and school security and safety professionals, called for more funding to place carefully selected, properly trained school resource officers in every school in the United States, according to a press release from the group.
NASRO executive director Mo Canady made the request during a Law Enforcement National Stakeholder Organizational Briefing hosted by the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, which had been scheduled prior to Wednesday’s tragic school shooting in Parkland.
Grants provided by the DOJ are done through its Office of Community Oriented Policing Services to assist local communities in hiring school resource officers. The DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs also has a Comprehensive School Safety Initiative that funds research for improving school safety. Canady praised both programs and advocated for their expansion.
“If we are truly interested in keeping students safe at school, we as a nation must fund professional SROs,” Canady said. “There are unfortunately no perfect solutions to the school shooting problem. But SROs — who are sworn law enforcement officers with special training for working in schools — provide a layer of security that cannot be achieved by so-called ‘armed guards,’ who are not sworn officers. SROs build valuable, positive relationships with students, faculty and parents that often enable the SROs to obtain information on planned violent acts before they occur.”
Canady says there are a number of incidents where SROs have either stopped school shootings before they happened or ended them shortly after they began.
NASRO is also requesting improved school perimeter security and training for all members of school campuses.
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I like the idea of increasing the number of SROs in schools. The article mentions that several incidents have been prevented or stopped by officers on campus. Unfortunately, there have been incidents where an SRO was on campus but unaware of a problem in the interior of the building. Notifcation to the on campus SRO is an essential component to assisting them respond in a timely manner. There are notification systems in place, such as SafeDefend, that can be activated only by staff and immediately alert the SRO down to the room number while at the same time setting off alarms to alert building occupants of a threat.
I applaud your efforts at keeeping kids safe and secure in our schools. Officers aren’t ubiquitous so information in a timely manner is critical. Calling 911 or using a public address system has proven to fail time and again. We put fire alarms in our buildings to expedite response and alert occupants. We should do the same for hostile intruders.