High Schools Find That Resources Are Integrat Part of Their Community

By Manuel Gamiz Jr., The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

May 20–It was his last week on the job at Whitehall High School, and officer Kenneth Stephens was walking proud as he gave his replacement a tour of the school. With about an hour to go before the school bell rang on a mid-April afternoon, Stephens’ replacement got some real-life training.

Two students were fighting, and before long, dozens more were shouting and shoving and refusing to return to class. By day’s end, six students were arrested and facing expulsions, and Stephens, his replacement and a few teachers had bumps and bruises.

The fight on April 12 was an anomaly at the high school. Previously, Stephens had to break up just three fights in almost seven months — an amazingly small number, he thought, for “his small community” of more than 1,600 students. Some students were upset to see the police use force that day, but Whitehall officials said the fight underscores the importance of having police in the halls.

The brawl comes at a time when local, state and federal officials are touting the simple presence of a uniformed police officer as one of the most effective ways to combat violence in schools and prevent crime involving youths outside the school.

Local educators and law enforcement at Freedom High School in Bethlehem Township, for example, said school violence increased dramatically when their resource officer was on medical leave, and at a gathering at Parkland High School last month, law enforcement officials said officers on a campus improve school safety.

Districts report school crime to the state Department of Education. The number of school officers in districts will be included for the first time in the department’s annual report on school safety, which is scheduled to be released this summer, said spokesman Michael Race.

“A school campus in a major school district is a community unto itself,” Whitehall Police Chief Ted Kohuth said. By building relationships and bonds of trusts with students, he said, school resource officers not only help curb crime in the schools but also officers occasionally get tips about crimes in the township.

Besides a security staff, many districts in the Lehigh Valley region have uniformed and armed officers from police departments in the municipalities that feed the schools. Bethlehem has seven officers, Allentown has five, Whitehall has two, Salisbury, Parkland and Easton each have one. Besides a Palmer Township officer stationed at Easton Area High School, the district also employs five armed school district police officers who have arrest powers.

Others districts such as East Penn, Lehighton and Quakertown do not have any resource officers, although the districts have security officers or a retired police officer patrolling campus. When required, local authorities are called to make arrests or investigate crimes in those schools.

For several years, Allentown police department had two officers in 3,500-student Allen High School, easily the busiest of all the city schools, but now they have only one officer based there. After retirements on the police force in 2005, the number of school officers in the district went from seven to four.

In 2006, the resource officers in Allentown schools made 734 arrests, compared to 868 arrests the previous year, according to Sgt. Athanasios Milios, head of the police department’s youth division. Crimes ranged from fights involving weapons to thefts of iPods and cell phones.

“Let’s face it, the kids aren’t committing the types of crimes they did when I went to school,” Milios said. “Things are much more violent nowadays.”

While most schools embrace the idea of having officers in the halls, not all districts and departments can afford to have them. Reading school board members in March asked that three resource officers be taken out of the schools because, they said, crimes will happen with or without the officers, and they’d be better utilized fighting crime in the streets.

In recent years, schools in Upper Perkiomen, Easton and Forks and Upper Nazareth townships removed or reduced the number of school resource officers, mostly for financial reasons. Schools and police departments normally work out a deal to share costs for school resource officers.

The National Association of School Resource Officers, which was formed in 1991, also helps police departments and schools look for funding. But Dick Caster, the association’s executive director, said money in a federal grant program that once helped pay for officers in schools has all but dried up.

Allentown, Bangor Area School District, and Palmer, Salisbury, South Whitehall, Upper Nazareth and Whitehall townships took advantage of the grants from 1999 to 2004.

Emmaus Police Chief David Faust said his department applied for the grants three times to put an officer in Emmaus High School but never received a grant. He said the school resource officer is always a hot topic during borough budget meetings, but his department and the school district have yet to find a way to make it happen.

“Hopefully, it’ll happen some day,” he said.

‘Kiddie cops’ no more

Law enforcement and school officials say the school resource program is three-pronged: they provide security to teachers, staff and students; they learn about crimes inside and outside schools from youths usually unwilling to speak to police; they mentor and counsel students who are having problems, both in school and at home.

A recent study by the National Association of School Resource Officers showed that the officers spend 54 percent of their time on campus on law enforcement, 32 percent counseling students, and the remaining time teaching, according to Caster. The association provides training for school resource programs throughout the country.

Gone are the days when school resource officers were viewed as “kiddie cops,” Caster said, because fellow officers realize the complexities of the job.

At Allen High a few months ago, rumors swirled about a “beat down” after school. A group was looking for revenge for an assault weeks earlier that left one student with a stab wound to his neck and another with a lump on his head, police said.

For two days in February, a school resource officer heard the rumors and notified patrol units to be in the area of the school and nearby West Park as students walked home. Nothing ever happened. Milios credits the police presence with preventing the crime.

“If you flood the area, it’s generally enough to thwart any problem,” he said.

Many of the officers coach youth sports or teach the drug awareness and education program, DARE, at their schools. In Bethlehem, the Broughal Middle School resource officer also helps coach the football team while another officer teaches the ROTC program in the district.

This year, three of the six Bethlehem school resource officers added a parents’ version of DARE, which they teach at night for families of at-risk youths, said Sgt. Donald Hoffman, who supervises the department’s school resource program.

“These officers have a big heart for kids,” Hoffman said. “That’s what they all have in common.”

Hoffman said school officers shoulder huge responsibilities, almost as if they are watching over their own children.

“They essentially become a part of that educational team,” Hoffman said. “You have to almost want to be an educator and a teacher.”

‘Anything but a cakewalk’

Resource officer Mark Hanna has worked at every one of the Allentown School District’s schools over the past 10 years. Sometimes, he said, students just need someone to listen to them. “You see the good and bad,” he said. “You see the good kids, the ones who are here to learn. You have kids with a lack of motivation, a lack of goals, a lack of desire to excel in academics or sports. Then you have kids that are on the fence between good and bad. Those are the kids that you want to reach before they get caught making the wrong decisions.”

Between periods and during lunch, Hanna positions himself in a well-travelled hallway to make himself visible to students, both to let them know that he is watching them and in case they want to talk.

“Students just come up to me and tell me what’s going on,” Hanna said. “As a school officer, you have to know who associates with who, which students are not getting along and which students don’t like each other.”

Officers such as Hanna and Stephens in Whitehall said working in the schools for so many years has not only helped them as police officers, but also as fathers. They say they learn about the problems facing young people and the dangers they should be looking out for.

Many departments say that they get several applicants whenever there is an opening for a school position.

Benjamin Porobenski was one of eight officers who applied for the job of school resource officer at Parkland High School in South Whitehall. He started the job in February. After 41/2 years as a patrolman, Porobenski said, he was interested in working in the school because he liked the idea of starting and ending cases himself.

He said he thought it would be tough to get to know the more than 3,200 students at Parkland, but “the bad kids made themselves known to me rather quickly.” As with most schools, one of the bigger problems at Parkland is the theft of electronics, he said. While looking for stolen iPods and cell phones doesn’t sound so action-packed, he says, working in the school “is anything but a cakewalk.”

To go from the streets to the hallways, officers are required to take a week-long course offered by the National Association of School Resource Officers, said the association’s Caster. Among the lessons the class teaches is the law and how it pertains to schools and how to physically, emotionally and psychologically deal with students.

School resource officers, said Allentown Police Chief Roger MacLean, “are extremely valuable. These officers get to know a lot of these kids by name and face and get a good handle of what’s going on in that little school world.”

Ricky Cabrera transferred to Dieruff this year and one of the first things he noticed was the gun, badge and “everything else” about Hanna, the Allentown officer who was stationed at his new school.

“It makes you feel safe,” the sophomore said. “With him around, you don’t have to worry about being bothered by problems. You can just learn.”

While Hanna has had to arrest students, his job isn’t just about that, said Mike Koch, a 10th grade history teacher at Dieruff. “He provides guidance to the students,” he said, and along with the school’s security force, “ensure that this is a safe environment for our students to learn.”

Hanna, who is on leave as a resource officer, said, “Kids tend to slow down” when he’s around. “They get quieter. Things go smoothly.”

manuel.gamiz@mcall.com

610-820-6595

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

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