MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Common Council has voted 10-4 to approve a memorandum of understanding placing school resource officers back into Milwaukee Public School buildings.
Alderwomen Andrea Pratt, Millele Coggs, Laressa Taylor, and Marina Dimitrijevic were the four no votes.
Prior to the vote, Alderwoman Dimitrijevic initially propsed an amendment outlining unanticipated revenue raised to be spent towards Milwaukee Recreation. But other alders commented that the amendment wouldn’t place any funds in a concrete spot, but would merely indicate the intention of where the funds would be spent. After roughly 25 minutes of discussion, Alderwoman Dimitrijevic withdrew her amendment.
The vote comes after Judge David Borowski found the city in contempt for its non-compliance and imposed a deadline of March 15th for the city to have a plan to place SROs back into MPS buildings or face $1,000-a-day fines.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Judge finds City of Milwaukee in contempt over school resource officer non-compliance
The agreement includes splitting the cost for the SROs 50-50 between MPS and the city. It also requires the City and MPS to provide 40 hours of training and a list of which officers are assigned to which schools in the district by March 15th.
The Milwaukee Police Department contacted the National Association of School Resource Officers February 28th regarding SRO training. NASRO agreed to send instructors to Milwaukee to teach the NASRO Basic SRO Course to Milwaukee officers beginning March 10th. A NASRO spokesperson tells WTMJ as of Friday afternoon, the organization was preparing a contract for MPD to sign to host the training. NASRO Executive Director Mo Canady said Friday he didn’t expect to have individual officer registrations until later this week.
As for what the NASRO training for officers entails specifically, each officer will complete a five-day curriculum broken down into eight hours of sessions per day, according to training documents obtained by WTMJ. Students of the Basic School Resource Officer Training program must pass the examination with a score of 705 or higher. Those scoring below 70% will be given 14 days to complete remediation, and attendees can miss no greater than 10% of the total course time or a maximum of 4 hours.
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