Police officers to return to Olympia school campuses
Sep 15, 2023, 11:45 AM | Updated: 12:56 pm
(Photo from KIRO 7)
(Photo from KIRO 7)
Students in the Olympia School District will soon see armed police officers back on campus.
On Thursday night, the school board approved major changes that would bring the so-called School Resource Officers (SROs) back.
It’s been three years since the district wrote SROs out of its budget in 2020.
As KING 5 noted, parent Alesha Perkins, who runs a popular Facebook group for Olympia School District parents, pointed out the school board had ended its partnership with SROs in June of 2020.
“There was a lot of upheaval, regarding policing at that time, it was around the George Floyd death,” Perkins said.
According to a report this summer from The New York Times, some larger cities that removed armed officers from schools amid major protests after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in the summer of 2020 “are embroiled in contentious debates about bringing them back.”
It is not yet known when the officers will be back on campuses.
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Reactions from the Olympia community
There were parents and students on both sides of the issue.
“For 19 years, I’ve witnessed SROs in my district act with compassion and concern for children with adverse childhood experiences,” said Jamie Sullivan, an Olympia parent.
But, some parents don’t agree.
“In the grand scheme of security, SROs won’t add much of anything to the safety of the school. Metal detectors have similar issues, there’s costs, there’s staff, and there’s training,” said Matthew, a parent.
Some students agreed.
“I, as a student, am not at all comfortable with police walking the same halls as me,” a student identified as Julian said.
The vote came after two gun-related incidents at Capital High School that happened less than two weeks after students returned to class.
The first incident happened when a student brought a loaded gun to school on the first day of class. A few days later, there was a scare at the school when teachers thought they saw a handgun in one of the bathrooms. Police found a BB gun in a toilet.
The board spent three hours working on amendments, and in the end, decided to bring back the officers.
Contributing: Kate Stone, KIRO Newsradio; KIRO 7; Steve Coogan
