Our Dual Role as Enforcers and Educators

Chief Patrick Fuller

Austin Independent School District Police Department: When you consider that our school district has 78,000 students, 10,000 employees and 5,000 volunteers and visitors on any given day, our crime rate is extremely low. According to studies conducted in 1995, the average crime rate in Texas’ schools is in the low 100’s per 1000 people. We’ve got low 60’s per 1000. It’s not just the district police or the administration, there are a lot of people who do a lot of things right. One of those things was our decision to bring the Junior Police Academy into our schools.

School district police departments are different from other law enforcement agencies in that we are part of the educational process. We are in the schools before, during and after classes. We work with students, parents and administrators to protect the school environment.

If we want to do our job well, we must recognize that the optimum educational environment is very fragile. You can’t have a lot of disruption and still maintain that optimum level of learning. At the same time, we cannot stop disruptions by denying an education to troublemakers. The problem we face as school district officers is how to fulfill our dual role as enforcers and educators. It’s a delicate balance.

Let’s say, for example, that you have two thirteen-year-olds fighting in the hallway at school. You can’t treat them the same way you would two thirty-year-olds doing the same thing on a public street. For the older men your only option may be an arrest or a citation. But with the students you may still have an opportunity to teach them alternatives to fighting. Our officers need to take the time to help students work through their problems so that when the officer isn’t around the next time, the students can work that problem out for themselves. That’s what I’m talking about – enforcing the rules while at the same time ensuring that the school will be a healthier and safer place in the future.

Of course, a big part of our job is to stop disruptive situations before they start. Students know who is dopin’. They know who is carrying a gun, and who is going to fight. But the big question we’ve always faced is how do we get the students to share that information with us?

They aren’t likely to go to a police officer with that information, unless a safe relationship already exists between that officer and student. It’s not hard to understand: a student wants to know that if he shares information about a harmful situation, the officer with whom he shared that information can deal with that situation without getting the student into trouble. In order to get the information, we need to do our job well. A trusting and sincere relationship must exist between officers and students. As we all know, most students aren’t rushing out to form this kind of relationship with police officers. We feel, therefore, that it’s the officers’ job to take the initiative on that one.

Unfortunately, this approach is easier said than done. 90% of the contact that officers have with citizens is during  confrontational situations, and, as a result, a lot of officers tend to think of all citizens in that context. School district officers have a tendency to carry this attitude into the schools with them. Many do not trust the students - and others are just plain afraid of them.

That’s were the Junior Police Academy comes in. The program allows officers and students to interact in an environment free from enforcement. It provides an opportunity for officers and students to see each other as people rather than as enemies. When an officer stands before a class and presents material that he understands and loves, students respect that. When a student raises his hand and shows genuine curiosity about a profession that he sees depicted a thousand times a day on radio and television, officers return that respect.

Recently, during an informal discussion between a group of officers and students, one student said that he hated cops. I asked him if he meant his school resource officer? The student looked shocked. “No, those other officers,” he said. He was talking about officers on the streets. Here in our schools we have been able to create an ownership between students and officers. It’s no longer ‘them’ or ‘they.’  It’s “he’s my officer” or “she’s my student.”  As someone who strives to maintain a healthy school environment, that type of attitude gives me a lot of hope.

In the beginning, when we first started with JPA, we had some schools that didn’t want to participate. They had limited space and resources, and because they didn’t understand JPA, they didn’t want to invest in it. Now our biggest problem is that the schools keep pulling our officers off of the campus to teach more [JPA] classes. The students may not see it, but we do. And so do the schools – the Junior Police Academy works. It supports a healthy and safe school environment, and we will continue to use it.