‘Kind of my passion:’ Resource officers address role in area schools

LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Some 7,000 students – our future leaders – are top priority for Mark A. Roberts and Heath A. Provo, school resource officers with the Lafayette Police Department.

“We weren’t appointed to these positions,” Roberts told the Diversity Roundtable last week. “We chose to be here, I wanted to be the school resource officer. I think that really means I have the passion and I really enjoy the kids because ultimately they’re going to be doing my job. So, we’ve got to build them up from the ground up, because one day they are going to be our future leaders.”

Organizers for July’s Diversity Roundtable wanted to give the community an opportunity to meet Roberts and Provo, who also served as the DARE officer.

Roberts and Provo introduced themselves to members of the community as well as an opportunity for the community to ask any questions on their minds.

“I thank you guys for inviting us to do these things. We love doing community outreach, we love doing talks,” said Roberts. “I always thank the mayor and the police chief every day, for giving me an opportunity to work in the schools, because that’s kind of my passion. Officer Provo is the same way.”

School resource officer Mark Roberts speaks during a diversity roundtable, Thursday, July 7, 2022, at The Arts Federation in Lafayette, Ind.

Roberts has been with LPD for 25 years. During his time at the police department, he’s worked in several different divisions – 18 years on the riot team, 12 in the traffic division, 10 as a field training officer, and over the past 5 years, he’s been serving as LPD’s school resource officer .

As LPD’s resource officer, Roberts is responsible for the 14 schools within the Lafayette School Corporation, as well as around 7,000 students across those campuses. Luckily, he’s not juggling that all by himself. Roberts will normally have 20 to 22 off-duty officers spread across the school district aiding him.

“I carry two phones,” Roberts said, “and starting Aug. 11, these things never stop ringing until school is out. It’s in an extremely busy position.”

Since Roberts took the position as Lafayette’s SRO, he’s tried changing the culture of how officers ought to handle situations with students who’ve gotten into trouble.

He has pushed forward the idea that SRO officers ought to be educating students rather than acting as a means of enforcement.

“When I first started back in the late ’90s all the way through the 2000s, up until about a few years ago, if two kids got into a fist fight, guess what, they both got arrested and both went down to juvenile intake, said Roberts.

“There’s a group called JDAI, that’s come together to say, ‘Hey that’s not a good idea.’ The school-to-prison pipeline is a real thing and if we can keep kids from being handcuffed, thrown in a squad car, then that should be our main goal.”

“When I talk to kids, my number one job as an SRO is education. If I could educate someone to make sure they don’t make the same mistake a second time, then I think I’ve done a good job.”

After Roberts finished speaking with the community, Provo was asked to define the difference between a lockout and a lockdown at school.

When it comes to the safety of students, many in the audience were curious about what procedures LPD had in place to keep their children safe.

It’s been over a month since the mass shooting at a Uvalde, Texas, school, but the concern regarding children’s safety is still readily on the minds of parents.

“It’s unfortunate this day and age, this has been in school policies for years, but it is still unfortunate that we have to have something like this because people want to go into a school which is a very target-rich environment with a lot of kids, to cause harm,” said Provo.

The difference between a lockout and a lockdown primarily depends on the immediate threat to the students.

In the case in which a robbery was happening near school grounds, for example, the resource officer will tell the school to conduct a lockout. This means that staff and faculty will close and lock all doors on the campus, and students would not be allowed to be dismissed until the officer has deemed the situation resolved and safe.

In the case of a lockdown, that means the resource officer has determined that there is an active threat inside the building, and students are to clear the hallways and report to the nearest classroom.

From there staff is expected to close and lock all the doors and windows in each classroom. They are also told not to leave their classrooms for any reason and to remain quiet.

At this point in the presentation, a member asked Provo if there would be an officer on campus with access to a master key, in hopes of avoiding a situation in Uvalde where the shooter was believed to be behind a locked classroom door with students and teachers trapped inside.

“Officers Roberts and I, along with administrators, since we’re the main SROs, we have a master key to all the doors here in the school corporation,” said Provo.

“If a situation were to come like that and a suspect barricaded himself, we would be able to arrive, which hopefully we’d be there in the first place. But we’d be able to arrive and get a key to them as quickly as possible to try and get into that room.”

Noe Padilla is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at 1NoePadilla.

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