Schools plan fewer cops on campus

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 | 10:58 a.m.

Confronting a budget crunch and a small applicant pool for police officers, Clark County School District officials plan to rely less on its cops to secure its campuses and increase reliance on specially trained security guards.

"We have to face reality -- one problem is the cost of hiring more officers and another is the severely limited availability of qualified applicants," said Walt Rulffes, deputy superintendent of operations for the district. "With specially trained monitors we could free up our police officers for more patrols and specialized responsibilities."

School police on patrol last week arrested three students loitering near an elementary school with knives, a Taser and nunchakus and later recovered 58 weapons -- including two handguns -- from one of their homes, police said.

The district's police force currently has 154 officers covering day and night shifts. Each of the district's 30 comprehensive high schools is assigned two on-campus officers while most of the 43 middle schools have one. There are no officers permanently stationed at the district's 166 elementary schools. Additionally each of the district's five regions has five officers assigned to daytime patrol.

The fact that it was school police on patrol who spotted the students highlights the need for more roaming officers, rather than keeping them tied to one particular campus, said Clark County School District Police Chief Elliot Phelps.

Increasing the number of daily patrols has been a top priority for several years, Phelps said. The number of officers on daily patrol is the same as it was in the 1997-98 academic year,even though the district has added 70 campuses since then, including eight high schools.

"There is a lot of activity going on in the public parks attached to our campuses and in the neighborhoods that eventually spills over onto our campuses," Phelps said. "Those are situations only an observant, aggressive patrol officer can tackle."

The district's police force is made up of sworn peace officers who carry guns and go through academy training.

In the 2002-03 academic year, 867 students were suspended or expelled for weapons possession, up from 637 in 2001-02. Incidents of violence toward students has also increased, with 9,407 citations handed out in 2002-03 compared with 6,849 in the prior school year. And during the last school year 373 students were cited for violence toward staff, up from 276 in 2001-02.

Phelps said there are two main reasons for in the increase in criminal citations: The district's enrollment has swelled by more than 12,000, and the placement of additional officers at middle schools has allowed for more enforcement of the laws at those schools.

The district plans to count on its specially trained security guards, giving the guards more campus security duties to cover, for the increased off-campus responsibilities being given the district's cops.

The guards, called campus monitors, earn between $9.74 and $11.84 an hour, and currently direct student traffic between classes and report students for minor infractions such as leaving school without permission or wearing inappropriate clothing. They also provide school police with additional support at after-school activities such as athletic events or dances.

A committee composed of administrators, support staff and school police is in the process of drafting a new job description and requirements for campus monitors, said Jeff Hafen, the school district's director of support staff training and development. The final draft is expected to be completed by early next month, he said.

One challenge will be bringing the district's existing campus monitors -- about 500 of them are assigned daily to schools -- up to speed on the new job demands, Hafen said.

"There's going to be a lot of training required to fulfill the expectations," Hafen said. "They'll need to know how to handle large crowds or a gaggle of upset students. Right now we're not teaching them any of that."

With the new job duties campus monitors would likely get a pay increase, Hafen said. Even with that cost factored in it would still be more cost effective than hiring more police, Hafen said.

The plan to revamp the campus monitor position is "long overdue," said Phil Gervasi, head of the Clark County School District's Police Officers' Association.

"This will allow our officers to do actual police work instead of keeping us stationary at a stadium gate, wanding people as they come in," Gervasi said. "There should still be a full-time officer at those events but with better support they'll be free to provide more coverage and pay better attention to the scene."

Gervasi said he has heard rumblings of plans to reduce the number of officers assigned to campuses and replace them with campus monitors, and he would oppose that.

Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, who consults with school districts across the country, said he understood the staffing dilemma faced by the Clark County officials. However, Trump said, even the best-trained campus monitors can't replace the effectiveness of having a school police officer on site.

"There's no deterrent to crime like a cop," Trump said.

Two years ago the Clark County School Board approved hiring 31 new police officers, using a combination of federal grants and general operating funds to pay the salaries. As of this week school police had eight full-time officer vacancies. With the starting salary for a school police officer at $36,587 -- well below those offered by municipal police forces -- attracting qualified candidates has been difficult, Phelps said.

"We need our officers on patrols, making arrests, doing investigations and taking reports," Phelps said. "We want to reduce our response time and give better coverage to our elementary schools. If we're going to do all those things without significantly increasing the size of our force, we need to reconsider how we're allocating our human resources."

There has been tentative discussion about reducing the number of school police officers assigned to some high schools and replacing them with extra campus monitors, Phelps said.

Roger Jacks, principal of Desert Pines, said Tuesday he was satisfied with having two police officers and five campus monitors assigned to his school.

"If we had to give up one officer in exchange for more monitors I'd be OK with that provided there would be more mobile school police units in the area to respond if we needed them," Jacks said. "There's no way we could lose both (officers)."