School District signs agreement with police for SROs
The day after the Osceola County School Board approved its interlocal agreement with the three local law enforcement agencies to provide school resource officers (SROs), one of them showed how it’s been training in active shooter situations to keep students safe.
The first day of school is Aug. 10, and while campus officials have been prepping to welcome some 80,000 students, members of the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office’s tactical teams have been training, many on school campuses, in active shooter drills.
“They’ve spent several days training for the worst-case scenario — a school shooter,” Sheriff Marcos Lopez said at a Wednesday press conference. “If something like that happens in Osceola County, my deputies will not be setting up or staging, they will be running toward a threat and engaging.”
He said the training was designed to be “chaotic” and create the same confusion likely found in a real-world situation.
“Just because someone runs toward you doesn’t mean it’s not a threat,” Lopez said. “They have to assess and analyze in a real situation.”
He said OCSO is capable of plugging into school camera systems, to be allow dispatchers to identify the clothing a shooter is wearing, and zone in on exactly where in a school or on the grounds they are. Lopez also said they’d be testing a new gun detection system this year — software that helps detect the presence of firearms and alerts OCSO directly, which triggers a message to the school’s SRO and dispatches additional units to the school. And, SROs in high schools will all have body cameras.
“We will work diligently through the year to assure all Osceola County students are safe,” Lopez said. “We want them to have an environment where they can strictly focus on learning, not fear, and teachers can focus on teaching.”
New Osceola School Superintendent Mark Shanoff said there’s nothing more important than the safety and security of our students — even more than achievement.
“It’s critical that we work together to maintain a public trust and ensure our students are safe, every day,” he said. “I want to thank all of our SROs for the work they do; the proactive policing and relationship building with students is critical.”
At Tuesday’s School Board meeting, enough board members took issue with the Kissimmee Police Department’s use of campus “Guardians” — those who are not sworn officers, but former officers, or military veterans, some who are SWAT-trained — as a “backup to the backup,” to make the first vote on the agreement fail. But, when Shanoff answered a question by a board member that he couldn’t guarantee SRO coverage for schools on Aug. 10 without the agreement, it passed during a second vote. He and Lopez tried to ease any fears of substandard service on Wednesday.
“They have to be more proficient (than officers) when they train to use their firearms. They’re getting the same training we’re getting,” Lopez said.
Shanoff said he’s comfortable moving forward in the event there’s a need for a trained Guardian to provide life safety.
“My experience with guardians is much the same as the Sheriff’s. When I worked in Volusia County, we had Guardians in the elementary schools, and they went through the same scenario training that our Sheriff’s Office puts Guardians who serve in the charter schools through,” he said. “At the same time, the relationships SROs have with the agencies that come behind those officers are critical to the overall picture of the safety of our kids.”
