School safety comes into focus in Montgomery Co. after arrest of student accused of planning shooting
The coordination between law enforcement and school officials in Montgomery County — along with the initial report from a witness — was credited for averting a potential catastrophe after an 18-year-old student was charged with making a threat of mass violence targeting Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland.
The incident came a week after Montgomery County Public Schools heard from student school board member Sami Saeed who urged the board to move faster on school safety. At that meeting, Saeed cited his own survey of students and said that many felt nothing was being done to deal with their concerns about safety in their own schools.
During a news conference regarding the arrest of 18-year-old Alex Ye, Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones was asked if he believed that school resource officers (SROs) should be brought back.
Jones said, “Our officers are committed to being in those schools when needed and being visible when required.”
After the news conference, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy told WTOP he had never supported removing SROs from the schools. He said he currently gets messages from parents and community members detailing fights and even videos taken by students inside schools.
“I can’t help but believe that some of the violent attacks that we’re seeing in our schools that are being photographed by other kids — and these are pretty vicious attacks — would not occur if a police officer was on school property,” he said.
At the same news conference, Montgomery County Council member Will Jawando, who heads the council’s Public Safety Committee, said he doesn’t see the need to restore SROs.
He said that police haven’t disappeared from schools under the community engagement officers (CEO) model. “I see our CEOs active in the schools.” The difference with the new model, Jawando said, is “they’re not patrolling the hallways, they’re not there all day. But if there’s an issue, they’re right there.”
On Friday, Kennedy High School Principal Vickie Adamson sent a letter home to parents explaining that a trespasser had entered the school during lunch and “brandished a knife.” According to Adamson’s letter, security disarmed the trespasser, and the school’s CEO was “already on school grounds, and security quickly alerted her to the situation.”
In 2021, the SRO program, which placed officers in a single school full-time, was eliminated.
Under the current program, the CEOs are assigned to a single high school cluster, have access to a workspace and respond “when called upon by the school leadership,” according to a Montgomery County Public Schools survey on the topic.