AL POLLOCK

Nothing is as important as the protection of our children. Broward County’s system for protecting our children is disjointed and broken: 

• Municipal law enforcement, BSO and the Broward School Board have school resource officers (SRO) on school campuses. Their training is not uniform, their processes for handling crises are inconsistent, and their authority differs from campus to campus. 

• Multi-year service at the same school by BSO resource officers creates complacency and inefficient operations.

• Currently, there is not a comprehensive cooperative effort by BSO and school officials to have joint active shooter training.

 

Prevention is the first step to bringing more security to our schools. As your Sheriff, I would require a BSO patrol deputy to park near schools in their jurisdiction at the opening and close of each school day. A deputy’s presence is not only reassuring and reinforces a safe zone, but also may discourage people from breaking the law on or near school campuses.

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SROs must be thoroughly trained and periodically rotated among schools to bring heightened awareness and thoughtful security processes to school campuses. All SROs, regardless of their jurisdictions, must receive the same spectrum of training and retraining – from active shooter and self-defense to counseling and conflict mitigation – to have uniform quality and service standards across all school campuses. All law enforcement officers will have the capability to access live-video feeds of the security cameras directly to their laptops. Failure to do so continues to put our children at risk.

 

As your sheriff, I will work with the Broward School Board and cities to bridge the trust and communication gaps between county and municipal agencies, and develop a higher quality, stronger, more agile and more consistent SRO system to protect our school children.

 

As the father of four children who attended Broward’s public schools, I can assure you, our children’s lives do matter.