After That Viral SRO Story, What Districts Should Know About Police Conduct in Schools
September 23, 2019
By: Stephen Sawchuk
Source: Education Week
National attention is centering on a Florida school resource officer’s arrest of two young students, including a 6-year-old girl who reportedly kicked another student while having a temper tantrum.
The incident occurred at a charter school, the Lucious & Emma Nixon Academy. Officer Dennis Turner, who had reportedly been disciplined for excessive use of force, was fired late Monday after outrage poured in from around the country.
The Orange County school district maintains its own school police force, but Turner appears to have been a city police officer hired as an SRO, possibly to meet the mandates of a new Florida school safety law requiring schools to have an armed staff member in every school as a way to prevent mass shootings or minimize the harm caused by an armed assailant. In 2018, the city of Orlando and county agreed to hire an SRO that the city’s 13 charters would share, according to WFTV.