But I am Here to Help: How School Climate Factors and Interactions Define School Resource Officer Roles

The presence of police officers is not an assurance of safety for everyone. Yet,

modern concerns for school safety suggest there is a need for more police officers in

schools. Over the last 70 years of School Resource Officer (SRO) programs, the variations

of SRO program implementation and the expectation of roles and responsibilities has

produced conflicting research on benefits or harms of police in the school environment.

The purpose of police in schools has shuffled from relationship-building ambassadors for

the community, to educators on crime prevention and drug use, to law enforcement

officers for punitive juvenile sanctions, to counselors and role models for legal

socialization, and other roles for emergency management and crisis response. Plans to

place more officers in schools for purposes of “school safety” requires an examination of

the SROs’ roles within the school, their interactions with students, and how these roles

and interactions contribute to safety. This study explores the roles of SROs to

understand the variations of roles within a program and understand factors influencing

the roles of SROs (e.g., school climate, initiation by others). To evaluate these roles and

potential influences, cluster analysis and multinomial regression models were developed

from one year of SRO-student interaction data (n=12, 466) collected daily from the

Richland County (SC) Sheriff’s Department SRO Division located in South Carolina.

These interactions were defined by the framework of counseling, educating, and law

enforcing roles. Results indicate the variations of roles performed are largely influenced

by the school type (e.g., elementary), SRO perceptions (e.g., counselor), and the

engagement of SROs by school officials for specific roles.