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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
After state funding to place School Resource Officers in every school was previously declined, Metro Nashville Police Department is now requesting that additional money with hopes of placing an SRO in every building.
In a budget meeting this week, Jeff Long, who serves as the Commissioner and Governor’s Homeland Security Advisor, reported that a request had just been received from the district.
“We just got a request this week. The Metro Nashville Police Department, they are now placing officers in the elementary schools of Davidson County,” stated Long.
They have applied for an SRO Grant Application for this school year to provide officers for 52 schools: 29 middle, 16 high, and 7 elementary. The plan is to continue to add elementary schools to the list as they are able to hire additional officers.
Previously, MNPD stated that they were unable to staff all schools with officers because they did not have the manpower available.
However, at the start of the school year, they announced an initiative that would make community officers available to elementary schools “to provide support to those school teams as well as offering a visibility as a deterrence to threats.”
JC Bowman, Executive Director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee, said, “There is no other factor more important that putting somebody there at the door when somebody walks in to make sure they have a purpose for being in that school, and so that’s the greatest deterrent to making sure people don’t get hurt in our schools.”
MNPD says they are working to recruit veteran officers from other jurisdictions. After training, those former SROs could be placed in a Metro Nashville school.
One Response
Why should TN taxpayers pay for this? In Williamson, the County pays for the SRO’s.
Message to Bill Lee > You already gave them $500 million for a football stadium. Davidson just approved an expanded bus system, which is a huge waste of money. Do NOT give them money for this. If you do, you will have to pay for a SRO in every school in TN. A better solution is to let teachers be armed. That will stop shooters better than SRO’s who hide when the shooting starts like in Parkland and Uvalde.