Role of Law Enforcement in School Safety

Safe schools are the concern of every community. If a school is safe, and if it feels safe, children are better able to learn. How do we make this happen? First, we need to understand the problem—What are the threats to school safety? These include crime-related behaviors that find their way to school each day, such as: alcohol and other drug use; aggressive and violent behavior; self-destructive behavior; and the impact of child abuse. We also need to understand the challenges that exist to law enforcement officers working in partnership with schools. Because law enforcement and school personnel differ in so many ways, they face challenges in the areas of communications, perception, roles, responsibilities, and data sharing. After defining the challenges, we can build on the consensus that we need to use a multi-disciplinary approach. We can use evidence-based strategies to increase the likelihood of success. We can use a variety of strategies to overcome the challenges by: identifying leadership that fosters mutual trust; defining and implementing complementary partner roles and responsibilities; choosing officers best suited for proactive work; and finding effective ways law enforcement and school personnel can work together to share information, counsel, train, and carry out programmatic work. The goal of the session is to share learning from the Federal Safe Schools/Healthy Students initiative to advance the effectiveness of law enforcement-school partnerships aimed at safer schools. The session will also share resource organizations to help law enforcement and school partners to work more effectively together.