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Julius Melendez
The committee charged with scrutinizing Osceola County’s School Resource Officer program last week finalized survey questions for students and staff.
Among the questions for middle school and high school students: Do you support the SRO program?
School Board Member Julius Melendez formed the Citizens Advisory Group for School Safety in February after an SRO slammed a female student to the ground while trying to break up a fight at Liberty High School.
The officer, Osceola County Sheriff ’s Deputy Ethan Fournier, is on paid administrative leave while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement continues investigating the January incident, which was captured on video and made national headlines.
The advisory group has not specifically addressed the incident, but has been exploring how SROs are trained and interact with students.
The survey results will help delineate SROs positive and negative interactions with students on campus, Melendez told the News-Gazette.
“And if the majority are negative it defeats the whole purpose of the SRO program,” he said.
At its meeting last week, the advisory group also discussed whether SROs should be required to wear body cameras.
“Not all law enforcement agrees. It’s split. Some officers like the cameras because they believe it protects them, but some don’t feel that way. It’s split among law enforcement, but 90 percent of the civilians I’ve talked to support body cameras,” Melendez said.
Major Dan Weis, representing the Sheriff ’s Office, and Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O’Dell, at the meeting said they are in favor of considering body camera requirements. St. Cloud police already are required to wear body cameras.
Said Weis: “We have two SRO’s in every high school, and we work with the school board on that. (Superintendent) Dr. Pace made the mention that we are not disciplinarians, and we’re not. We have about 64 SROs that serve high school, middle school and elementary schools and all the Charter Schools. As far as training goes, we have policies and procedures in place that require our SROs to go to the basic SRO program, and they attend a yearly conference, we attend the block training that we do, and what people need to know is that the SROs that are coming into the schools have a lot of training already.”
State Senator Victor Torres, who represents parts of Osceola County and attended last week’s meeting virtually, said he wanted to improve the SRO program for students, teachers and SROs themselves.
“I say our School Resource Officers stay in our schools. I like the idea that our officers are in our schools, that our officers are trained. One of the things I look at is how do we make it better?” he said.
Meanwhile, O’Dell recently implemented new training for his officers on how to handle critical moments involving youth.
“I wish I would have thought of it sooner,” O’Dell said, adding that it could be a model for other law enforcement agencies.
The advisory group will finalize the body camera proposal and its other recommendations at its next meeting in April and will be presented to the School Board.
