Demopolis leaders move to put officers in all city schools

In the wake of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. last week, education leaders nationally have reprised the conversation surrounding student safety. Demopolis leaders, Thursday, took the formative steps of a rethinking of school security when they committed to putting school resource officers on each campus for the duration of the academic year.

“The mayor called me last week and asked if I would be opposed to having a school resource officer on each campus. Of course I said, ‘no’. ‘How much is this going to cost us’ was my question. He said, ‘It’s not. The city council, the mayor, and the chief of police are going to do this.’ So, Monday morning, we will have SROs and they will be there the rest of the school year,” Demopolis City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff said. “I’m sure we’ll meet this summer and try to figure out how we can do this moving forward. It’s exciting but that is Demopolis for you. That’s proactive thinking from the city and the mayor, which makes us feel good as a school system that we have such a supportive community.”

“This is extremely important because, to me, there’s nothing more precious in our community than our children,” Demopolis Mayor John Laney said of the urgency with which city officials made the move to implement the new measures.

The Demopolis Police Department has provided two school resource officers to the system’s four campuses for the past few years. Officers Tyrennza Washington has split his day between Demopolis High and Demopolis Middle while Sgt. Monica Oliver has floated between Westside Elementary and U.S. Jones Elementary. The new model will allow each of those officers to remain at a single campus during the course of a school day. Officers not scheduled for regular patrol on a given day will fill in the gaps and man the other two campuses. Those officers will be compensated within the framework of the Demopolis Police Department’s overtime budget.

“When I came here as chief in 2009, I assigned the first SRO to the schools. They had never had one here in the city of Demopolis. I knew that was very important to take care of our schools. If something happens at our schools, we respond regardless. I felt it was a measure to avert some problems that could potentially happen,” Demopolis Public Safety Director Tommie Reese, who has long advanced the idea of having officers on each campus, said. ““When we were able to get the second officer in our schools, that really made it better. I kept pushing to try to get other officers in schools, but the resources were never there. Really and truly, they’re not there now. But we’re going to make it happen off my overtime budget. It is probably going to exhaust my overtime budget to have officers to cover the schools, but those kids are very important to us. I don’t want any of our kids to be hurt in this city.”

“Officer Washington and Sgt. Oliver have been great and we’re just tickled pink to know that we have two more to have one officer on all four campuses,” Kallhoff said.

The step is substantial for school safety within the city but it is far from comprehensive and offers only a temporary solution. City and school leaders will reconvene in their efforts to develop a long-term plan for the upcoming academic year.

“It is our full intentions to work along with the mayor’s office along with the city council and the school board to find some funding for the upcoming year to have officers in all four of our schools,” Reese said.

“At the last city council meeting, the public safety committee was directed to prepare a plan and recommendations for the city council for the future. These are actions that we took to take care of today. They will give us the solution for tomorrow,” Laney said.

The school system will also continue to take necessary and reasonable steps for increased security that fit within the current budget.

“One thing we can do right off the bat is make sure our exterior doors are locked. Sometimes kids or adults tend to put rocks or something in them to keep them open. We need to keep them locked to where there are minimal access points into our building. Wherever those access points are, we’ve got them monitored. That costs no money right off the bat,” Kallhoff said.

School leaders are also exploring other avenues such as routine maintenance on existing camera systems, evacuation point creation at the high school, and fencing at the middle school.

“Our schools were not built for the time that we are in now. They are spread out so far apart. We in Demopolis, like other places, are kind of complacent. We’ve got to be realistic that things can happen,” Reese reminded.