Bill would call for further mental health training for school resource officers

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A bill being introduced in Tallahassee would require school resource officers to go through additional mental health and de-escalation training, focused specifically on juveniles.

SROs are already required to go through critical incident training, but the current law does not specify that the training must have a focus on youth.

School resource officer Harry Reid was fired by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, after video surfaced of him grabbing a middle school student by her hair.

Miles away in Volusia County, Deputy Julio Rodriguez resigned after Heritage Middle School students told investigators he would ask them inappropriate questions.

And in Kissimmee, an officer was fired after she took a naked video to send to her husband inside the bathroom of a charter school she was supposed to be protecting.

“It is certainly a concern for everybody, and I'm sure we can speak for the other agencies in the area that it is critical for us to get the right person in each school,” Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O’Dell said. He took swift action against the SRO who made the video, which opened up what he says is a coveted position.

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In Kissimmee, the SRO unit makes up about 10% of the department, following the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Safety Act, which calls for an officer in every public school in the state.

“I have been worried that we would just have to assign officers there, to fill the positions, but we're fortunate we haven't had to do that. We've had people interested,” O’Dell said.

But State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith says that hasn’t been true for every agency across the state.

“It's not just like, suddenly, we pass a law, and we need to have all these school resource officers, and they fall out of the sky, and they're trained, and ready to go,” Guillermo Smith said. “That's just not practical.”

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Though many law enforcement agencies require officers to go through SRO-specific training, FDLE has no certification process in place for an SRO or school safety officer.

The only state requirement is mental health and crisis intervention training, and right now, that doesn’t have to be specific to juveniles.

House Bill 1083 would clear up language to ensure every SRO is trained on mental health and de-escalation of conflicts involving children.

“There are a lot of unintended consequences of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas act,” Guillermo Smith said. “It was legislation slapped together in two weeks, in response to the horrific tragedy in Parkland, but there are tweaks that need to be made.”

O’Dell said in Kissimmee, SRO supervisors, up to the rank of captain, are doing regular check-ins at schools to make sure officers are living up to their expectations, and also to check for burnout.

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