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Commissioners OK SRO agreement with schools
liberty-schools

The Liberty County Sheriff ’s Office is another step closer to providing resource officers at Liberty County schools.

County commissioners approved a memorandum of agreement with the Liberty County Board of Education to provide school resource officers for the remainder of the school year at Bradwell Institute, Liberty County High School and all three middle schools, with the school system picking up the $400,000 expense.

“I am so glad to see this,” said Commissioner Connie Thrift.

Liberty County Sheriff ’s Office has a SRO at Liberty Elementary School that comes out of its budget for the remainder of the school year.

The sheriff ’s office has put a lieutenant and a sergeant in charge of its SRO program, and once the new school year begins, the plan is to beef up the presence in the schools, with two officers in each high school and one in each middle and elementary school, Chief Deputy Al Hagan told commissioners.

Chief Hagan also assured commissioners that the deputies chosen for the program will be trained specifically to handle issues that arise at schools “The biggest and best commodity in our county is our kids,” Chief Hagan said. “We don’t want to stick just anyone in there because they wear a badge and a gun. We want to put the right people in the school system.”

Chief Hagan said having the SROs may provide other benefits, such as building bridges with students that previously may not have existed for law enforcement and giving students another outlet for discussing issues affecting them.

“The whole purpose is to build relationships with these kids,” he said.

School board members voted 6-1 at their January 10 meeting to accept the memorandum of agreement, which takes the number of current SROs from four to eight for the remainder of the school year. Dr. Franklin Perry said the $400,000 is available from savings the school system has made in its budget this fiscal year.

Though the school system is paying for the costs of the SROs, they will be sheriff ’s office employees. Though those SROs may be called away from the schools to deal with an emergency, the sheriff will do so only unless absolutely necessary, according to the agreement.

Chief Hagan said he and Dr. Perry have been working to make the arrangement a model program.

“That’s our kids we’re talking about,” Chief Hagan said.

SRO deputies also will conduct any mandatory training during the summer, when school is out. Commissioners and Chief Hagan also broached the topic of SROs at the Pre-K Center and at the Liberty College and Career Academy.

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