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SRO Program In January 2002, the Pleasanton Police Department and the Pleasanton Unified School District implemented the School Resource Officer (SRO) Program as a joint effort to enhance the safety and wellbeing of students. SROs are assigned to high schools and work in collaboration with school officials to facilitate and enhance campus safety. They investigate incidents on campus, and act as a liaison between school officials and the police department. The officers also engage with students in non -enforcement situations to foster lasting relationships by deconstructing barriers between youth and law enforcement in the spirit of community policing. The presence of the SROs offsets the impact to patrol officers who would otherwise be handling routine calls on school campuses. Between 2015-2019, the Pleasanton Police Department responded to an average of 1,089 calls for service at Pleasanton schools and authored an average of 229 police reports each year at these schools. SROs are dedicated for school -related calls and provide a prioritized response to campuses during school hours of operation which provides consistency to the schools by ensuring the same officers respond and are available for follow-up with and aware of campus -related issues. SRO programs have come under recent scrutiny. Some critics of the program cite a 'school to prison pipeline' correlation between SROs and students. However, recent studies have shown that while SROs are exposed to more student criminal situations, they arrest students at equal rates as a patrol officer. In addition, a 2009 study by the University of Tennessee found that "when SROs do arrest a student, they tended to downgrade the severity of the charges against the student".' Some research suggests SROs have a better understanding of possible school related consequences associated with a student's behavior and therefore are less likely to increase the severity of charges against a student. "Furthermore, SROs create the opportunity for school -aged children to have non -confrontational, non enforcement contacts with law enforcement officers that may contribute to more positive opinions of the police later in life"." The data on SRO programs varies. There are a number of research papers and recommendations including a recent article by the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights that argued SROs did not improve school safety or reduce school violence and that their presence resulted in more suspensions and expulsions for students of color. A review of SRO programs written by the National Institute of Health (NIH) stated "The best designed and most representative study of SPO [NIH refers to SRO as SPO -School Police Officers] influence to date suggest that increases in the SPO workforce in schools is related to increases in reporting of crimes, higher likelihood of harsher punishments for students, higher rates of weapon and drug crimes, and more reporting of non -serious violent crimes, compared to rates in schools without SPOs.""' The NIH report also included a recommendation of formalizing the relationship between PD and SPO in a memorandum of understanding. Page 2 of 6