Officer Amanda Lawing works her beat in the cafeteria at Hough High. (Jonathan Cox/CorneliusNews.net)
By JONATHAN COX
CorneliusNews.net
Cornelius police officer Amanda Lawing’s beat is the halls and classrooms of W.A. Hough High, where she has worked as a School Resource Officer for the past year. Her duties include providing security and – if necessary – enforcing the law, but she says that she also tries to be a role model for the students she serves and protects.
“We’re there to give them the positive side of law enforcement,” said Lawing. “A lot of these kids, they only know us as the people who arrest them, take them to jail, write them tickets – but that’s not all we do.”
Lawing came to the Cornelius Police Department after six years in the Army reserves, and after a year on the job she applied for the School Resource Officer position. She was chosen out of six applicants and assigned to Hough after training at National SRO school.
North Carolina state law requires police officers to be stationed in high schools and middle schools, partly to serve as a deterrent to potential shooters. “We go through a lot of training for active shooting scenarios,” Lawing said.
With a police officer patrolling the halls, students are also less likely to misbehave. “If students see us around the hallway or in the cafeteria,” Lawing said, “they’re a lot less likely to fight each other, or do things they shouldn’t be doing.”
While discipline is part of Lawing’s job description, she also tries to build relationships with students. In just a year and a half working at Hough High, Lawing said that she has earned enough students’ trust that they feel safe speaking to her about abuse or mistreatment:
“A student who has been traumatized or abused, they’re more comfortable talking to me – someone who interacts with them in the hallway, high-fives them, and goes to their sporting events – than they would be talking to a police officer they’ve never met,” she said.
Hough High Principal Laura Rosenbach agreed that Lawing’s rapport with students encourages them to speak up about abuse: “She enables the kids to approach her if they have problems,” she said.
SUSPENSION OR CITATION?
Lobbyists with the organization Youth Justice NC have said that stationing police officers in schools leads to the criminalization of student behavior, with students being funneled into the criminal justice system instead of being dealt with by the school’s disciplinary system.
In North Carolina, anyone over the age of 16 is prosecuted as an adult, meaning that an arrest would go on a high schooler’s permanent record, affecting job opportunities for the rest of his or her life.
Lawing said she’s careful not to cite a student for behavior that Hough High School’s disciplinary system can deal with, and always warns first offenders before issuing a citation. As an SRO, she has discretion to decide when a fight crosses over from a student scuffle into criminal public affray.
“If this is the first time the student has [fought], I’ll give them a warning,” she said, “but if they’re a repeat offender I might have to give a citation.”
“A lot of the issues can be handled by the school administration, though, where I don’t have to charge them,” she added. Often, she collaborates with administration on dealing with problems.
“We work collaboratively all the time,” Rosenbach said.
Statistical studies of schools in the Southeast have shown that SROs can be an effective deterrent to crime. A 2009 article by Matthew Theriot in The Journal of Criminal Justice found that schools experienced a 52.3 percent decrease in the rate of arrests involving assault charges when an SRO was stationed at a school, as compared to schools without SROs.
Lawing said she rarely, if ever, has to make an arrest. Compared to other Mecklenburg County Schools, she said that the students at Hough are “remarkably well behaved.”
When problems do arise, Lawing hopes that a timely warning from her can encourage students to abide by the law in the future: “These kids at this age are making the decisions that are going to affect their future,” she said.
Officer Lawing keeping watch at lunch at the Hough High cafeteria (Jonathan Cox/CorneliusNews.net)
