Jurisdiction

[marksiwel]

How is that an overstepping of power?

The "School" police should have jurisdiction in, the school, and maybe a mile within the school.
But giving them power in almost every COUNTY in Texas? Too much. But thats just one mans opinion.

You sound totally paranoid with that statement. I wouldn't worry about it until I heard about the abuse of such authority.

Paranoid? Why would I be paranoid ?, I have a gun.

[CompVest]

School Police should stay on school property, imho.

[chabouk]

My humble opinion: instead of having their own police departments (with all the overhead that entails), school districts who choose to have police should arrange (and pay for) officers detailed from the local jurisdiction.

[Mack]

My humble opinion: instead of having their own police departments (with all the overhead that entails), school districts who choose to have police should arrange (and pay for) officers detailed from the local jurisdiction.

The Garland school district uses Garland police officers. The call them a SRO, School Resource Officer. But what is interesting to me is that Rowlett High School, which is of course in Rowlett but is in the Garland school district, has a Garland police officer as their SRO. Talk about jurisdiction confusion.

[marksiwel]

The reason you want a school to have its own Police is
1. So it wont cause too much of a Ruckus for the local PD to be sending the PD to the School all the time
2. you want the officers to know the Kids, so that kids are taught they can go to the police for help, and so th officers know who is a REAL threat and who isnt. Example in Coppell they had to Taze a kid because they knew he was dangerous, in other situations they might have tried to take the kid by force, hurting themselves and the kid.

But, stay on your school, leave me alone.

[srothstein]

And just for a contrary point of view, the reason you do not want the school district police restricted to the campus is that they know the kids and the education code better than the city officers (who should get to know the people in their area also, but...). The school police can make the truancy arrests much easier than the city police as one example of their need for off campus jurisdiction.

And of course, the school police can help back up the city PD in a real emergency, thus letting the city get away with a few less officers and slightly lower budget. Obviously, you pay for it in school taxes anyway, but until we fix the whole school district boundary problems (crossing city and county lines), and then the multiple (37 or so) types of cops in Texas, we really just shift money around to different governments for duplication of effort. I have my solutions, but they are unpopular in politics.

[CompVest]

I still say they are for a specific purpose and place and they should stay there.

[jbirds1210]

The school police can make the truancy arrests much easier than the city police as one example of their need for off campus jurisdiction.

+1 That is no small task.

[mnr497]

Officers outside their jurisdiction can not enforce traffic violations. They have to be in their city if they are local police, or county if they are SO or Constables office. Also a deputy constable can write a traffic ticket anywhere in the county. They are supposed to write it for the precinct they are in at the time but that doesn't always happen. Also a lot of small towns next to big cities will write tickets out of their jurisdiction since 98% of the time people don't check or ask questions they just pay.

Officers can enforce traffic outside their home areas, but may not arrest for traffic violations outside their home areas.

A related story and I won't give out the name of the city since this should still be an on-going investigation.

A young officer from a larger town, with less than one year on the job, in his personally owned white Dodge Charger with red and blue lights executed a traffic stop on a driver in a smaller neighboring town for speeding. The officer was not in uniform but was allowed to have red and blue lights on his car because he worked extra jobs for highway crews. The female driver did not immediately ID since the guy was not in uniform and not in a marked car. He basically got her out and cuffed her saying she was going down for failure to ID. Local police show up per officer's request and ask what's going on. He tells them what was what and they say un-hook her as you have no traffic jurisdiction here and therefore no reason to stop and ask her for ID anyhow. Big city officer gets mad but obliges.

The officer on scene said the big town cop had a young female passenger that he thinks the young officer was trying to impress. Why he didn't do it in his own city I have no idea. He was about ten minutes from being inside it's borders. Maybe he was confused and thought he was inside the larger city but after getting her out and cuffed realized he wasn't.

The larger cities internal affairs showed up the very next day and asked for the video and officer's report.

This guy was wrong on so many levels....

[mnr497]

I still say they are for a specific purpose and place and they should stay there.

School PDs have jurisdiction on all property owned by the school, used by the school, on school buses and school bus stops. Some areas have enough officers to work the schools, some have contracts with the school districts enabling the agency to hire officers and assign them to the district. But most agencies are too small. In my county, we have 4 school districts - there is NO WAY we could handle their call volume and still provide services to the county!

(I'm not picking on your post, I know there were others.)

[Pinkycatcher]

School PDs have jurisdiction on all property owned by the school, used by the school, on school buses and school bus stops. Some areas have enough officers to work the schools, some have contracts with the school districts enabling the agency to hire officers and assign them to the district. But most agencies are too small. In my county, we have 4 school districts - there is NO WAY we could handle their call volume and still provide services to the county!

(I'm not picking on your post, I know there were others.)

The school districts would redirect the money it's spending on it's officers into your (in theory) more efficient department.

[gemini]

I still say they are for a specific purpose and place and they should stay there.

I agree for school district PD's. Stay on your campus turf.

I can only speak from experience regarding the DISD (Dallas) school district. Prior to DISD forming their own PD we had
DPD (Dallas PD) officers at the schools. The DPD officer our high school had KNEW the kids, KNEW the gang kids, knew
where to look for kids smoking dope, knew the parents etc. The officer attended football games, interacted passively
with various school activities like plays, musicals etc. A great guy. The kids knew he could be tough but they also knew
he was fair. Kids were prone to act like kids, he cut slack when needed, but was able to use sound descretion.
The kids and parents respected our DPD school officer. Plus, he had the backing of the entire DPD at his disposal.

The DISD PD now just kind of cruises around. Their attitude is not good. They often exhibit no common sense when
ordering kids to obey commands. I find them to be rude. They do not have a clue regarding the actual mood of the
students or what's really happening on a daily basis. Petty enforcement. The kids do not respect the DISD officers and
I doubt any of the kids would go to a DISD officer with a concern. When the DPD officer was at our school the kids would
often give him a "heads up". That exchange doesn't happen anymore. I know because my youngest is still in school, we talk.
Part of the problem is the 0 tolerance stance taken by many school districts. The local officers use of discretion has been
stripped. The lack of enough available quality personnel would be the other issue.

Sorry I got so long winded. I believe DISD should disband their PD and go back to having a DPD officer stationed at the school.
Pay the PDP officer. Certainly it would be a more efficient use of tax dollars. If we have campus PD's then limit them to their
respective campuses.