A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Officials say two school resource officers in Winder, Ga., played a big role stopping the gunfire that killed four people at Apalachee High School. Investigators say an encounter with one of the men ultimately led to the surrender of a 14-year-old accused of killing two fellow students and two teachers. Other school shootings have helped shape public perceptions, both positive and negative, of the effectiveness of these officers. Lucy Sorensen joins us now. She teaches public administration at the University at Albany, and she co-wrote an article for the Brookings Institution titled "Navigating The Tradeoffs Of Police In Schools." Lucy, so first off, briefly, what defines a school resource officer?
LUCY SORENSEN: Sure. So a school resource officer is a sworn law enforcement officer who has been assigned to a school either part-time or full-time. What makes them a little bit unique and distinct is that they are hired, selected and supervised by the local police agency. So they're not actually employees of the school district, which makes them a little bit different from security guards or other personnel that the schools themselves are hiring.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Considering so far from what we know that the 14-year-old surrendered when he was confronted by one of these officers, would this case make the case for having these kinds of officers in schools?
SORENSEN: So first of all, I think it's fantastic that they were able to end the incident when they did. Obviously, that's incredibly important. However, you could point to examples where SROs have been less effective at school shootings. Uvalde, Parkland, other types of incidents like that, where even with one or multiple SROs on the scene, they were unable to mitigate the harms of a school shooting. And so I think it's a little bit hard to point to one individual case and say this fully makes the case for SROs as being the best tool to try to prevent school shootings.
MARTÍNEZ: Right. Yeah, people died. Four people died. But there's going to be the argument that more could have died if an SRO wasn't there.
SORENSEN: Yeah, and I think that's very possible.
MARTÍNEZ: How many school districts across the country embrace this idea of hiring armed police to protect schools?
SORENSEN: It's very common at this point. So SROs began - the first SRO in the U.S., I think, was in the 1970s, but it really wasn't until the 1990s and - that they started to gain a lot of momentum, and there was a lot of federal funding for them. And so, at this point, about half of all schools have an SRO, either part time or full time. And so they're in a lot of schools, and it's not just high schools - it's middle schools. It's elementary schools. And we continue to see a push for more SROs, and so I think we will likely see an increase in their numbers.
MARTÍNEZ: Is there research or data to suggest that school resource officers are effective at combating gun violence? Because, I mean, I guess how do you know if someone is deterred just by the presence of them, right? That stat never gets logged.
SORENSEN: Yeah. It's one of those things that's almost - it's very, very difficult to study because they're such rare events. We don't observe the counterfactual. We don't observe the cases where SROs were able to prevent a school shooting that never happened. And so I would say what researchers have been able to look at is whether SROs can prevent violence more generally in schools. And the evidence on that is very mixed. Sometimes, we see that they reduce violence. I've seen that a little bit in my own research, that they can reduce fights, for instance. And sometimes, we see that they actually increase reported crime.
MARTÍNEZ: With something that happened, like what happened this week, Lucy, is there any way that something like this - and considering how close we are to the election - that it doesn't get political?
SORENSEN: I think that there's no way it can't get political. We've seen this happen so many times where, typically from the left, you'll see a push for more gun control. From the right, you'll see a push for more hardening of schools, SROs. I think we'll probably see that again. And what I hope is that we shift the focus to thinking about these school safety policies not just when a shooting occurs but kind of every day because that's when this is an important policy.
MARTÍNEZ: Lucy Sorensen is an associate professor of public administration and policy at the University at Albany. Lucy, thank you very much.
SORENSEN: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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