Carl Meredith: WCPSS police force a good idea

Regarding the Jan. 20 news article “Harrison: Schools should have own police force”: Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison has an excellent point: have a WCPSS police force that has unified command and specific school training.

Of course, his example of Charlotte-Mecklenburg begs the issue of whether there could be a Raleigh-Wake regular police force like the Charlotte-Mecklenburg template. There are potential savings of dollars and headaches, having a unified command and likely reducing to one the dozen or so number of human resources departments, training departments and subcommand structures.

Districts within that scope could retain most of the existing local command structure as district administration, yet enabling the necessary redeployment for emergency situations. Such a structure would exist parallel to the sheriff’s own.

This story was originally published January 21, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Carl Meredith: WCPSS police force a good idea."