Rock Island High School to bring back School Resource Officer
ROCK ISLAND, Ill. (KWQC) - It’s been four years since Rock Island High School had a School Resource Officer available to them on campus.
Now the Rock Island-Milan School Board will be reintroducing the officer presence in the school beginning in 2024.
Rock Island Chief of Police Richard Landi said this program has been on pause since 2019 mainly due to a lack of staff. He says he’s looking forward to potentially getting this important resource back in the hallways of Rock Island High School.
”Number one is always safety,” Landi said. “You know, we don’t want anything bad to happen in our schools.”
Safety, is the top priority of Police Chief Richard Landi when it comes to having School Resource Officers, or SROs on campus.
“Always a good thing for a sense of security,” Landi said. “A deterrent, if there is any type of behavior, that’s criminal, there’s someone there that can deal with it.”
Landi says SROs play a key part in keeping that sense of security alive, both during and outside of school hours.
“They’re going to be at the school every day while school is in session,” Landi said. “They’ll also be at school functions so, if they have games or type of dances or anything like that they’ll be attending, one of our School Resource Officers will be there, we have a primary and a secondary.”
Rock Island police eventually want an SRO at every school but Landi says they only have the staff right now for the high school.
“This particular School Resource Officer will be assigned to the Rock Island High School,” Landi said. “We’re hoping in the future as, again, as our staffing increases and we can move forward, we can add additional SROs that can help service the other schools.”
Everything that goes into keeping schools and students safe is important and Landi said the biggest benefit is always having an officer there.
“If something does happen, they can immediately respond,” Landi said. “And also the communication that is going to be, exists, that’s between the school and the police department.”
The city council voted yes on this agreement Monday night and the school board unanimously voted with the agreement Tuesday night.
Copyright 2023 KWQC. All rights reserved.
