Deputies on campus: Making a difference

 

   For the second year, Avoyelles campuses will have uniformed law enforcement officers on campus in an effort to ensure a safer environment for students and staff. 

    Providing on-campus security is an important part of the Avoyelles Parish School District’s “School Resource Officer” program with the sheriff’s office.  School District and Sheriff’s Office officials both said there are significantly fewer fights on campuses since the deputies arrived.   The actual number of students referred for fighting at Avoyelles,  Bunkie and Marksville high schools increased from 265 in 2013-14 to 428 in 2014015. However, Superintendent Blaine Dauzat said principals toughened disciplinary standards and counted verbal arguments as fights.

    “We had a workshop over the summer and better defined what will constitute a fight this year,” he said. “If nobody is touched, it will not be considered a fight.”

    While ensuring a safer environment is important, making a difference in the lives of the students in those schools is an even more important aspect of the program, Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s Office (APSO) officials said.

   The program to assign a trained and certified deputy to the district’s three non-charter high schools was implemented last year. Marksville, Bunkie and Avoyelles have a deputy on campus all day. LaSAS elected not to have one assigned to its campus, but  a fourth campus deputy has been fully trained and certified for the position should that change.

     With one year of experience under their belts, the resource officers are looking forward to an even better year than they had in the first year.

   “We made a difference last year,” Sgt. Eddie St. Romain said. St. Romain is the supervisor of the small group of deputies. He also oversees the DARE drug education/prevention program in the elementary schools. 

    St. Romain pulled extra duty to start this year, serving as the Resource Officer for Avoyelles High while the assigned officer, Deputy Tyra Mayeux, finishes her DARE training.

    St. Romain said he hopes to expand the DARE program to the junior high grades soon.

   After Mayeux completes that training, the parish will have five deputies certified as SROs and two certified as DARE. She and St. Romain will be certified in both programs.

    Deputy Reggie Sanders is assigned to Marksville High and Deputy Eric Overgaard is the Bunkie High resource officer.

Dauzat said the program was successful and he expects it to be even more so this year and into the future. He said he cannot recall a time during the year where an outside police officer was called to a campus for an incident. There have been a few such cases in previous years.

 

   “The Resource Officer Program does two things,” Dauzat said. “It serves as a deterrent, preventing trouble on campus. The main thing, though, is that it teaches kids the police are on their side, that they aren’t ‘the bad guys,’ that they are there for the protection and safety of all students, faculty and employees at the school.”

    Dauzat said the deputies serve as “someone who is there for the students to talk to. He or she is another person they can depend on.”

   Capt. Charles “Chuck” Bryant Jr., commander of the APSO Patrol Division which includes the SRO program, said deputies had no major disturbances or violent incidents to contend with during the year. There were still some school fights, but Bryant and St. Romain said the presence of the deputies had an obvious “calming effect” that prevented many situations from escalating into physical confrontations. Dauzat echoed that observation.

   “I witnessed incidents where having the resource officer stand there calmed the parents down to a civil level and avoided a possible physical confrontation,” St. Romain added.

   St. Romain sees the program as an important roadblock “to having drug dealers come on campus and, for lack of a better word, take over.”

   The School Board authorized the program last year, agreeing to pay the Sheriff’s Office $25,000 per assigned deputy in exchange for that deputy being at the school from 30 minutes before the first bell to 30 minutes after school is dismissed.

    That agreement also clearly spells out what the deputy IS NOT.

   He/she is not the school disciplinarian. A teacher cannot use the deputy as the “boogie man” to scare students into behaving and cannot send the misbehaving student to the officer to be “talked to.”

   The deputy is not to be used for routine lunchroom, bus and campus monitoring to relieve teachers of that duty.

  “We are there to ensure the safety and security of the campus and those in the school,” Bryant said. “The resource officer also serves as a mentor or advisor to students -- a positive role model -- a person they can turn to who will listen to them and try to help them.”

 

    He said this past year there were times when the deputy served as a liaison between a student and a teacher.

    “It could be that a student is more comfortable discussing an issue with the deputy than with a teacher -- or vice versa,” Bryant said.

   St. Romain said he routinely visits the schools with the resource officers, but he also visits at least one school a day as part of the DARE program or to provide a police presence around the school.

   Bryant also said the APSO has a patrol deputy go by every school every day.

   “We are committed to providing a safe environment for students to learn in  all of the schools in this parish,” Bryant said.

  “We are trying to reach as many children as we can,” St. Romain said. It is important that students realize police officers are human. They see that we laugh, we cry, we care.”

   “They come to realize over the course of the school year that the police aren’t always there to put someone in jail,” Bryant added.

   Overgaard said he enjoyed his year as Bunkie’s resource officer last year and is looking forward to another good year.

   “It is a chance for me to be a  positive role model for these students,” Overgaard said. “I’m able to improve on their attitude toward law enforcement. Instead of always being afraid when they see the police, like many of them are, I will help them to see that we are here to help them.”