Published in the Lancaster Online, by Karen Shuey

May 6, 2014

When a fight breaks out, you can count on Officer David Ruiz to be there.

And when a young boy wants to vent about his problems at home, you can count on Ruiz to be there too.

The mention of school resource officers in these days of mass shootings conjures the intimidating image of a armed security guard for some, but Lancaster Bureau of Police Chief Keith Sadler says SROs like Ruiz are in schools for much more than just safety.

“If you want to stop school violence, you have to build relationships with students. You need students to trust these officers enough to tell them what’s going on before it becomes a problem at school,” Sadler said during a press conference Tuesday morning outside McCaskey East High School.

Sadler delivered that message as part of an event at which Gov. Tom Corbett announced the recent award of $6.5 million in school safety grants.

Joined by local lawmakers, school officials and law enforcement officials, the governor praised the School District of Lancaster for its effort to combat school violence with programs that take a proactive approach to the issue.

“This is a great demonstration of how communities can come together to provide a safe learning environment for students,” Corbett said.

The district and Manheim Township Police Department — which provides protection to some of the schools in the district — were among the 81 schools and municipalities to be given a grant.

Superintendent Pedro Rivera said the $120,000 combined total awarded to SDoL and the police department will help fund the salary of one SRO stationed at Wheatland Middle School and another officer designated to travel throughout the district.

The new grant money is part of an effort to boost school safety led by Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, who attended the event Tuesday morning. The Republican from Jefferson County developed in response to the Sandy Hook mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Scarnati said he was aware that many schools had armed police and school resource officers walking their hallways but wanted to make money available for the ones that otherwise couldn’t afford it.

In Lancaster County, eight school districts received state money to help employ resource officers during the 2011-12 school year — the most recent year information was available.

SDoL has the most security with seven school resource officers keeping watch over the halls.

Elizabethtown, Ephrata, Hempfield, Manheim Central, Manheim Township, Penn Manor and Eastern Lancaster school district had one school resource officer on campus. Many districts share the cost of resource officers with local police departments or local municipalities.

The grants provide $3.9 million to pay for resource officers.

Another $2.6 million will be used to fund programs that target school violence through emergency drills and related activities with first responders. Lancaster County Career & Technology Center was a recipient of one of those grants. They got $25,000 to develop a plan to deal with an emergency.

Scarnati credited the success of the grant program to the encouragement he received from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Harrisburg.

The bipartisan support was on display at the press conference as Sen. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican, and Rep. Mike Sturla, a Democrat, took turns applauding the work of SROs and school officials.

“Hard lessons drawn from painful examples remind us that emergency plans have to be practical and practiced — not just polished and put on the shelf. It’s a tough assignment,” Smucker said.

Sturla said the focus of the program is about tackling that assignment.

“This is not about bringing officers into the school for enforcement. This is not about creating students with criminal records. This is about preventing students from ever getting in trouble in the first place,” he said.

(Karen Shuey, "Corbett stops by SDoL to announce state resource officer grants", Lancaster Online, 5/6/14)