Student Safety and School Resource Officer Interactions

Background: The number of school resource officers (SROs) assigned to American schools has increased dramatically over the past two decades. In fact, SROs are featured as the centerpiece of President Obama’s plan for improving school safety in the aftermath of the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. SROs are sworn law enforcement officers assigned to improve security and deter criminal behavior at schools as well as educate students and staff about violence prevention, assist with school discipline, and mentor students. They are usually armed, in uniform, and expected to be visible and central figures at their schools. Given the expectation that they be prominent figures at schools, it is reasonable to expect that SROs will impact students’ feelings of safety.  However, the relationship between interacting with SROs and this sense of safety has not been adequately researched.

There are important reasons to hypothesize that the presence of SROs might affect students’ feelings of safety. For example, while a visible police presence is expected to deter violent behavior and reassure students, community-based research has found that a high-profile police presence actually makes some people feel less safe. Furthermore, building trusting relationships with students often requires a pragmatic approach that is different from the more assertive and conflict-oriented training received by police officers.

Methods: Approximately 2,000 students (n=1,976) at seven middle schools and five high schools completed a comprehensive survey about their number of interactions with SROs, their feelings of safety, experiences with school violence, and attitudes about school. One full-time officer was assigned to each school and present daily. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to group students by their reported level of safety then bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models were developed to identify individual and school characteristics related to these groupings.

Results: More than half of the sample (52%) reported no interactions with their SRO during the school year and only 29% attended a class led by the SRO. The LCA identified two distinct groups of students. The first group (61% of the sample) felt safe throughout the school building while the second group felt significantly less safe around school. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression models showed no significant relationship in students’ number of SRO interactions and their feelings of safety; instead, African American students and victimized students felt less safe while males, students with more school connectedness, and students with more positive attitudes about SROs felt safer.  

Conclusions: The significant difference in feelings of safety between the two groups suggests that a sizable population of students experiences regular fear at school. Students’ sense of safety appears to be strongly affected by their experiences with school violence while interactions with SROs do not significantly affect these feelings. This weak effect may stem partly from the low percentage of students who reported interacting with SROs.  Whereas SROs are expected to be highly-visible resources at their schools, these data contribute to the emerging research showing that students do not perceive this to be true for many SROs.