On Friday, March 1, 2018, the Tennessee House of Representatives announced a bill to include employing off-duty police officers to patrol all Tennessee public schools. On the horrendous heels of the Parkland, Florida school mass killing spree by a lone gunman propped by mental disarray, governments all across the United States are convening with a focus on safeguards for America’s school children.
Despite what the US Congress is molding, states are also busily devising plans and blueprinting budgets tailored to school safety protocols.
Tennessee state Senator Mark Green (R) co-sponsored the School Safety Act of 2018. Sen. Green is a US Army Special Ops veteran and physician who presides in the Tennessee Capitol while also bidding for a US Congressional seat.
“There are a lot of issues that surround this, a lot of things that have to be fixed that this bill doesn’t necessarily address,” Senator Green told the media. “But this is a quick, emergency response that we can make that will bring resources to protect these children.”
Interestingly, the School Safety Act bill comes with a bipartisan thrust behind it.
Tennessee state lawmaker Antonio Parkinson (D), a former US Marine, co-authored the bill for the state’s public schools to have access to a list of interested POST-certified law enforcement officers seeking to buffer their ordinary salary by working security patrols at public school environs.
The other co-sponsor of the bill is former US Marine and Republican Rep. Micah Van Huss. His statement on the bill and its inherent purpose gets right to the heart of the matter: “More than ever, our kids are vulnerable to evil people with evil intentions. Now is the time for us to come together to protect our babies.”
Per the Times Free Press, “House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Stewart of Nashville, an Army veteran and bill co-sponsor, called it a ‘common-sense approach.'”
Rep. Parkinson added a flavor of military acumen, clarifying that “Semper fi” means “always faithful” and laced that virtuous message into the bill’s backbone. Mr. Parkinson said, “That’s the way we should be with our citizens and protecting our babies.”
As Rep. Parkinson elucidated, “This is an example, an example for the country, and I hope that the country takes heed to what we’re doing here in Tennessee with this bipartisan approach to…ensuring the safety and security of our children and our teachers and all of those who work in our educational institutions to make sure that their lives are protected. And this also displays for us…that we value the lives of our babies, above everything.”
Rep. Parkinson offered an impassioned speech addressing the Parkland, Florida shooting and the impetus for Tennessee’s School Safety Act. As you’ll hear, besides his responsibility as a Tennessee state lawmaker, Rep. Parkinson advocates as a parent of a 13-year-old daughter at a public middle school.
On Thursday, March 1, 2018, Rep. Parkinson said “I think arming teachers is completely unacceptable and asinine!” Candidly, he favors cops filling that boat.
A Tennessee Cop’s Sentiments
After revealing the School Safety Act, Tennessee lawmakers received the following written statement from a dad who happens to be a policeman who has children attending public schools in Memphis, and whose wife happens to be a public school teacher:
“First of all, THANK YOU for taking the lead on writing/sponsoring a common-sense bill (School Safety Act of 2018) to ensure the safety of our schools in Tennessee. As a father of school-aged children, a husband of a public school teacher, a veteran, and a current full-time police officer in Memphis, I am relieved to know that there are legislators such as yourselves that can come together [to] work towards a solution to keep my family safe.
“My wife is a full-time school teacher at an elementary school in the greater Memphis area where the School Resource Officer (SRO) was removed from his post prior to the Christmas break and placed back into the field, leaving the school without any security. In the days after the Parkland, Florida shooting, I volunteered to be armed at her school in the SRO office (maybe watching cameras) in plain-clothes with a concealed weapon until a permanent SRO was found. I found out just a few hours ago that the School District stated that I could not volunteer in that capacity, leaving my wife and all of those students at risk. I also found out today they have no plans on providing a permanent SRO this school year due to a lack of funding.
“My daughters attend a school which has one SRO; however, next year my oldest will be attending High School. In a recent meeting with incoming freshman parents, it was revealed that the High School will only provide two, possibly three, SROs for over 3000 students!
“I say all of this to put in perspective my concern for school safety since my whole world (wife and kids) spend most of their lives unprotected while I am serving the citizens of Memphis. I love my job and I love serving one of the most violent and dangerous zip codes in the country, but I would also love the opportunity to serve and protect my family, their friends and my wife’s co-workers when this bill is passed. If I can do anything for you in helping advance this matter, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. In reference to LT. COL. Allen West, ‘I’d go through Hell with a gasoline can if it meant saving the lives of my wife and children.'”
That letter was posted by Rep. Micah Van Huss after the School Safety Act was publicized on March 1st, and the name of the law enforcement officer who wrote those sentiments was redacted.
School Safety Act
Paring down the essential ingredients, Tennessee’s School Safety Act may cater renewed hope while it also incorporates some aspects rendering it rather lethargic.
Public school districts will receive a listing of cops within a 50-mile radius who have expressed interest in patrolling school grounds while in an off-duty capacity. The enlisted police personnel will be armed and permitted to stow-away a rifle in a school office. If a school resource officer is already assigned a school, the off-duty enrollees will serve in a supplemental security capacity and not involve themselves in any on-campus activities other than security rituals.
One of the factors in the Act denotes that school officials can not “disincentivize officers from participating,” meaning no one with school district authority can meddle in the economics of school safety patrol costs.
However, Rep. Van Huss explained that the respective school administrations will set policy as to the wearing of a police uniform or not, as well as open-carry or concealed firearms while off-duty cops are acting in the capacity as school patrols.
Since compensation was written in to the Act, it is worth considering how meager the pay rate per day is for police officers considering working at schools on their off-duty time. Tennessee arrived at roughly $50/day for each law enforcement officer. That in and of itself is a definite disincentive. On average, an academic day equates to roughly seven hours which puts about $7.14/hour in the pockets of school safety patrol cops.
It also pays $50/day for any after-school events. Typically, SROs attend all school football, baseball, and soccer games which ordinarily transpire Friday night or over the weekend. Include pre-game and post-game traffic control and enforcement and you have a nearly-full-day shift for…about $7.14/hour.
Although police personnel organically perform good deeds from the goodness of their hearts, it is a career. Like anyone else, cops have mouths to feed and notes to pay-off. The bill’s compensation offering disincentivizes the very purpose, undervalues police personnel, and overestimates the strength of the Act. It is no wonder the portion barring schools from any act to “disincentivize officers” was included.
Notwithstanding the low pay, Rep. Van Huss claims he has heard from many police constituents who wish to “volunteer” to do the job. One such example is the Memphis policeman who wrote the letter above (in italics).
The Act also curtails how many off-duty cops can work at any public school at any given time, limited to no more than two; this excludes already-assigned SROs. Incidentally, Senator Green expounded several times that SROs are effective as a deterrence —studies evince that fact— contrary to the inaction of Parkland, Florida’s SRO.
Incredulously, the bill’s text includes only hiring POST-certified law enforcement personnel. Every cop in the nation is a bona fide licensed cop when he/she gets certified by a state commission governing and authorizing its respective police officers via conferring certification (licensure) to practice law enforcement. Unless Tennessee lawmakers were trying to clarify that these school patrol jobs do not constitute security officers (who have no arrest powers), it makes no sense to codify it the way they did.
In a sense, off-duty cops working school safety patrols are essentially paying for themselves or, more specifically, being compensated by criminal enterprise money known as civil asset forfeiture funds. The kind of dollars adjudicated by courts as drug money, for example, would pay off-duty school patrol officers. Technically, that means no tax dollars spent, other than the costs of a cop lawfully seizing property and the judiciary deciding that it (cash and property) now belongs to the police. Often unpopular and controversial, civil asset forfeiture in this case may cause some to abstain from contention with its application.
The flip-side to the civil asset forfeiture coin is that arguments throughout the years condemned cops for seizing property; accusations engendered wrongly-placed influence since law enforcement agencies stood to gain. I’ve witnessed courtroom debates whereby plaintiffs vehemently waged that the police are not a business but a service…and civil asset forfeiture laws are abused. It was always ugly, yet police agencies prevailed often.
Point of that discussion is that civil assets used to pay off-duty cops to patrol schools may seem self-serving and misused. But again, taxing is an option most argue against, so funding sources for off-duty cops may have to be revisited.
In the event civil asset forfeiture funds dry up, state lawmakers caveated the Act by deferring to the Tennessee “rainy day fund” as back-up financing.
As each of the Tennessee politicians involved has candidly stated, this bill is intended as a real-time temporary “emergency stopgap measure” which will require tweaking until a more formidable School Safety Act is legislated. Rep. Van Huss labeled this Act a “four-year sunset solution” so that a more-permanent fix can be worked on in that interim.
As Senator Green conveyed, “There are a lot of issues that surround this, a lot of things that have to be fixed that this bill doesn’t necessarily address…this is a quick emergency response that we can make that will bring resources to protect these children.”
It’s a start for the roughly 1800 public schools throughout Tennessee. As Rep. Parkinson said on Thursday, “What is the value of our children’s lives?” Exactly!
