Mark Kinlaw: SROs must be trained properly

Regarding the incident that occurred between the police officer and student at Rolesville High School: I won’t comment on the incident itself because I don’t know all the details. But once again people are overreacting to something that is the exception; something that doesn’t happen very often.

Some are calling for the removal of these resource officers from the schools. Are they nuts? Have they been in these schools? Have they seen the behavior of some of the students?

Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison called for the school system to create its own police force (“Harrison: Schools should have own police force,” Jan. 20 news article). He clearly wants his officers to avoid the very thing they were created to do (keep the peace).

The problem isn’t having police in the schools. On the contrary, this has been one of the best decisions the school system has made. The problem is proper selection and training of the officers. And this is a small problem because these incidents are very uncommon.

So instead of overreacting and defining a new solution, let’s make the current one better.

This story was originally published January 21, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Mark Kinlaw: SROs must be trained properly."