By now you’ve seen the viral videos; a school resource officer and a student getting into a physical altercation.
Just a few months ago in North Carolina a male officer was caught on camera for body slamming a teenage girl.
41 Action News took the video to several school leaders in the KC Metro, including Chief John Douglass, with the Shawnee Mission School District Police Department.
“There is never really a justification for a police officer to grab a child and body slam that person to the ground,” he said.
But could something like that happen in our schools? Douglass says the answer is "yes."
Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent and member of the National Association of School Resource Officers Mark Bedell agrees.
“Nothing is fail proof, so the answer is yes,” he said.
Just about every public school district in our area has school resource officers. That includes licensed officers and trained security personnel.
Many school districts in Kansas have police departments. Those officers have the same power as an officer you’d see on the street.
While SRO’s are tasked with keeping the students and staff members safe, student arrests have more than doubled over the last three years. Claims of excessive force have also gone up. More and more kids finding themselves in handcuffs.
In 2014, a KCPS teacher accused second grader Kalyb Primm of being unruly, never physical or imposing harm.
“We were halfway down the hall, he put handcuffs on and twisted my wrists a little,” Primm told 41 Action News in an interview, shortly after the incident.
Primm’s mother says an SRO took him to the principal’s office like a criminal.
His father is fearful of the lasting impact that could have.
“When kids play, what do they socialize handcuffs with? The bad guys wear the handcuffs. The good guy puts the handcuffs on the bad guys,” he said.
KCPS, now under new leadership won’t comment on what happened to the second grader.
Current Superintendent Bedell said the reason you see a lot of physical encounters with SRO’s is because they aren’t used correctly. "Those are administrative functions. So you have principals, assistant principals. You have trained personnel that handles routine disciplinary infractions. That’s not an SRO job to go in a classroom and pull a kid out of a seat or tell a kid to pick up their head.”
If an SRO is called to assist, Douglass says the SRO should always maintain control of the situation, even if it means waiting and doing nothing.
“It’s a much better option than having to get in a wrestling match with a 16 year-old girl and throwing her over your shoulder,” he said.
KCPS currently has six SRO's working in three of its high schools. These high schools combined have about 2,000 students.
The SRO is also there to build relationships, but according to a nationwide study, nearly 40 percent of students don’t even know their SRO’s name. More than half have never spoken with him or her.
KCPS School Board President Melissa Robinson says those numbers have got to change.
“SRO’s are not there to come from a discipline or enforcement standpoint. This is about relationship building and mentoring,” she said.
A study from the National Association of School Resource Officers says nearly six percent of children have carried a weapon onto school property. Nearly eight percent say they were threatened or injured with a weapon, and 20 percent of students say they were bullied.
Experts say eliminating these threats is the core function of an SRO, not getting a student to comply with the classroom routine.
“If you’re building relationship with folks, you’re not going to be worried about somebody flipping out their iPhone right,” Robinson asks rhetorically.
That’s why Douglass encourages his officers to build relationships, starting on day one. “Develop that relationship with that young man or young woman and say, ‘hey bonehead, you’re getting close to the edge, and I care about you, back up!'”
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Kevin Holmes can be reached at Kevin.Holmes@KSHB.com
