A group of New York sheriff’s and Senator Republican Patrick Gallivan, have publicly asked for funding to have an armed police officer at every school in the state of New York. This request has come about due to the recent Florida high school shooting, where 17 people were found dead. The main questions being asked about this recent statement made by these New York sheriffs are surrounding who will foot the bill to pay these armed officers at each of the more than 6,700 public and private school buildings. A news article put out by Daily Freeman got a statement from the specific group of sheriffs saying, “there are about 4,500 school buildings in the 733 public school districts across the state. Private schools have about 2,000 buildings.” Some school districts in New York already have school resource officers funded by the district or their county or a combination of both; however, the State sheriff’s association want to point out that many of these schools have stopped having officers on their campuses.

The financial argument against the funding for these armed police officers have been challenged by the fact that every judge in the state of NY is granted an armed officer during work hours to guarantee their individual safety. When asking Todd Gorman, the current judge of Alexandra Bay, retired state trooper and teacher of criminal justice at BOCES, what his opinions are on the placement of these armed officers in New York school systems, he explained that he is “all for it” and that it will prompt for a safer school environment. The sheriff’s association did not voice how much statewide school resource officer would cost, although they estimated that the amount would be equivalent to one additional teacher on the payroll.

The state sheriff’s association is looking for school resource officers, who are usually local sheriff deputies or police officers. These SROs have dropped significantly in the recent years from 400 to less than 200 full-time officers. Their salary and benefits are usually picked up by the school district, county government or shared by both. The Buffalo News reported that “Sheriffs around the state have different ideas about how to implement the program, including having only a single point of entry at each school where the armed officer would be stationed or using retired law enforcement for the jobs. The association said it supports assigning ‘active deputy sheriffs or other active police officers to the schools as SROs who would have the freedom to move about the campus, ‘network’ with students and staff and either head off an incident before it happens or at least be there on scene to immediately respond.”

This law will not directly impact private universities in the state of New York, but it may draw attention to the concept of placing SRO’s on university and college campuses as a way to better secure safety amongst their faculty, staff and students.