WAUWATOSA – When school resource officers return to Milwaukee Public Schools, it won’t be the only city in Milwaukee County to have a program mandating that police officers work in schools. Wauwatosa has had a resource officer program for many years now, finalizing a formal agreement between the school district and the police department in 2023.
WTMJ has been covering the return of police to MPS since it became legally mandated on January 1, 2024, from the initial delay to the ongoing process to get a plan approved by the school board and will continue to bring you the latest on this story.
Last week, Wisconsin’s Afternoon News was able to sit down with a current and former SRO, Wauwatosa Police Officer Farris Griffin and Sgt. Jim Morrill, to talk through what it’s like being a school resource officer.
How do you become a school resource officer?
“That was, without a doubt, the most fulfilling time in my career as a police officer,” Morrill said.
Morrill no longer works in schools, having transitioned to a supervisory role within the department, but credited Griffin for bringing him into the program. Griffin currently works at Wauwatosa West High School, and said he relishes the ability to build relationships with the students he works with.
“We get to interact with people, not only when they’re at the worst moment of their life,” Griffin said. “We can be there for them when good things are going on, where students got their first job, they got a good grade on a test, they’ve overcome challenges in their life as far as communicating with their parents at home, conflicts with their peers – we play a role in a number of those situations.”
Morrill said officers have to have at least a few years experience on patrol before applying for the resource officer program, the hiring for which is a joint effort between WPD and the school district. Once an officer becomes an SRO, the specialized training begins.
“For a new SRO, they’re going to go for a week right away, usually out of state, for a National Association of School Resource Officers basic course,” Morrill said. “All SRO’s will go for that one-week course to get an understanding of how things are a little different in the schools than they are on the streets.”
Resource officers also receive crisis intervention training and active assailant training to cover issues varying from mental health crises to a violent attack on the school. Griffin said that here in Wisconsin, there is also a conference every summer of SRO’s in the Green Bay area that he attends.
“Everybody has a different situation, a different perspective. I get a heads up on things that are coming,” Griffin said.
But no matter how much training officers receive, Morrill said there’s no substitute for experience.
“The ultimate training is literally being in the school and learning as you go,” he said.
What does a school resource officer’s day look like?
Both Morrill and Griffin repeatedly stressed how different the work is as a school resource officer compared to the typical work of a police officer on patrol – and how different they have to be temperamentally. Morrill said one of the biggest differences is seeing the same kids day in and day out.
“It’s not like on the street, you arrest someone and you may never see them again,” Morrill said. “You’re going to see that kid and their family and their friends for the rest of your career as an SRO. So selfishly, we can’t even afford to destroy a relationship or to be biased or to treat someone negatively because we thought they did something wrong.”
While they do see the same kids every day, Griffin said that he never knows quite what will happen when he opens the school doors each day.
“I know each day I’m going to have a lot of conversations, but I’m not sure what about yet,” he said.
Griffin said his role is not just simply to enforce laws at the school or provide beefed-up security, but is instead primarily focused on relationship-building and education.
“We serve three primary functions. One of the first functions is as a public safety educator,” Griffin said. “We do classroom presentations with students, and you can kind of tailor it to your student base, whether it’s in an elementary school or a high school.”
Griffin said the other two functions are mentorship and law enforcement, with the education officers provide covering topics like searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment and what it’s like to be a police officer.
Morrill said the unpredictability of the day-to-day work was part of what he liked – and misses – about working in schools, along with the relationships he was able to build with students that continued even after they grew up and graduated high school.
“Those are the things that make this position so great,” he said.
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