FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE…
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Sheriff Mitch Ralston Announces Expansion of Gordon County School Resource Officer Program
Sheriff Mitch Ralston Reports:
Beginning this week, the Sheriff’s Office is expanding the coverage provided to the County Schools System. The School Resource Officer Program, which had previously consisted of 3 deputy sheriffs, has been doubled in size to 6 deputies. The team will be tasked with providing safety and security measures for the entire county school system. These deputies will be in school facilities on a daily basis county-wide. These schools include Gordon Central High School, Sonoraville High, Middle, and Elementary Schools, Ashworth Middle School, Tolbert, Swain, Belwood, and Fairmount Elementary Schools, Red Bud Elementary and the new Red Bud Middle School, as well as the private schools Coble Elementary and Cumberland Academy. In addition to expanding the School Resource Unit by 100%, the regular patrol shifts have been ‘staggered’ to allow for extra deputy sheriffs to be on patrol during the peak activity hours of 7am -9am and 2pm-5pm when students are arriving at and leaving from the schools. Uniformed deputies will continue to handle traffic details at the Sonoraville Schools complex in the mornings and afternoons, and plans are in development for traffic control at the new school site at Red Bud. Additionally, selected plainclothed deputies will be at school facilities at random times.
Sheriff Ralston said, “Since I took office in 2009, I have consistently improved and upgraded the school resource officer program. My first steps were to send all of the deputies assigned to the Unit to the proper training. I then added a full time supervisory officer. The unit has been a success, but law enforcement must evolve with our society. The Sandy Hook incident taught us that any school facility can be the target of a violent criminal, and we must pre -plan and evolve accordingly. “This new plan will drastically improve the coverage provided by the Sheriff’s Office to ALL of the county schools. In the past some of the resource officers have been stationary; this new plan incorporates greater mobility and flexibility. Simply put, there will be more deputies in more schools more of the time. My administration has been more involved with the public schools system than any other administration to date, and cherish the relationship we have with the school administration, staff, and students. This is the most fair and logical system of allocation of resources on hand. I am proud of the fact that we have been able to accomplish all of this without any budgetary increase, or any cost to the Board of Education.
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