RIDGEFIELD POLICE JOIN FIGHT AGAINST DRUGS IN SCHOOLS

RIDGEFIELD -- By February, a school resource officer will be back on
duty at Ridgefield High School.

A police officer was stationed in the high school in 2001, but by the
2003-04 school year, the position had been eliminated due to budget
cuts.

With the death of Ridgefield High senior Joseph Lucisano on Nov. 14 in
a suicide related to drugs his mother believes he got at the high
school, school and town officials assert an officer should be returned
to the high school as soon as possible.

School resource officers play a key role in controlling the presence
of drugs in schools, according to police spokesmen in Ridgefield,
Newtown and Danbury.

"We have had four drug arrests at the high school this year," said
Newtown High School Resource Officer Domenic Costello. "Three were for
possession and one was for sale of marijuana. I honestly believe the
presence of drugs at the school has been curbed due to my view on
drugs. Nobody's tougher on drugs than me, and the administration is
right there behind me."

Ridgefield Police Capt. Steven Brown, who supervisors that
department's program for police in the schools, agrees. Speaking of
the incident in the 2005-06 school year when a traffic guard was
arrested for selling marijuana to students at Ridgefield High School,
Brown said he thought that the presence of a school resource officer
"would have made that activity a lot more difficult."

"Going back to our experience of having an SRO at the school, the SRO
was part of that school community and stayed on top of the situation,
watching for dangerous situations to keep them from happening," Brown
said.

Brown noted that students at the high school held then-School Resource
Officer Fernando Luis in high regard.

"Luis was well liked and had a positive effect at the high school,"
Brown said. "The kids came to him and talked to him."

The $18,000 to pay for the Ridgefield officer for balance of this
school year will come from the town budget's contingency line. Money
for two school resource officers for the 2007-08 school year, one at
the high school and one to cover the town's two middle schools, will
be part of the budget discussion for that year, Ridgefield First
Selectman Rudy Marconi said. The funds would come jointly from the
town and the education board from a new budget category called security.

Police officers keep a high profile in the schools they
serve.

Costello is at Newtown High from when school starts at 7:30 a.m. until
after 2 p.m. when it ends. When classes are changing, Costello is in
the halls making his presence known. At lunch, he is in the cafeteria.

"I think I've gotten the message across that I'm there to talk to,"
Costello said. "A number of the kids drop in to my office."

In past years, Newtown High School had a marijuana problem and heroin
was present in the school. In 2002, 57.3 percent of all high school
juniors and seniors reported using marijuana. By 2005, that percentage
stood at 43.3 percent. Heroin use was being reported and at a school
board meeting in August 2006, it was reported that 10 Newtown youths
were being treated for heroin addiction.

Costello feels that trend is changing due to his pro-active approach
and that of his predecessor, Officer Steve Ketchum, and of the
schools' administration.

This school year, the Newtown Police Department's K-9 unit started
coming into the high school to sniff lockers and cars in the parking
lot for drugs. The dog was brought in at the request of the Newtown
Board of Education at parents' urging. It has been brought to the
school twice, once before school started to get a baseline reading and
once after school started. No drugs were found.

Costello's presence goes beyond that of being a monitor in Newtown. He
talks to classes about drunken driving and crime prevention. Luis did
the same thing in Ridgefield before his position was eliminated.

"Officer Luis taught classes as part of the health curriculum," Brown
said. "Those classes were a combination of law-related education and a
high-school level D.A.R.E. program."

D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. It is a national
program of police officer-led classroom lessons that teaches children
how to resist peer pressure and live productive drug-free lives.

As Ridgefield High's school resource officer, Luis was also there as a
resource for the school administration.

"I remember Principal Joe Ellis was very appreciative of the program,"
Brown said, "especially on 9/11 when the SRO helped come up with a
plan for what the school should do that day to handle the situation
with the students."

Luis still teaches the D.A.R.E. program for 5th-grade students in
Ridgefield. In Danbury, at Broadview Middle School, the school
resource officer, Bob DiNardo, teaches an anti-bullying course to
6th-graders.

"I teach the kids that doing the right thing isn't always easy, but
it's always right," DiNardo said. "The students come in to the 5th
grade as kids and leave after the 8th grade as young adults."

DiNardo meets and greets the kids when they come into the school in
the morning and keeps a high profile all day. He deals with student
arrests by bringing the student and the parents into his office, where
he is as much a counselor as a police officer enforcing the law.

"I'm a liaison between the police department, the school and the
parents," DiNardo said. "If a patrol officer has a problem with one of
our students outside of school, he makes the initial contact, then
lets me deal with the student at the school."

DiNardo teaches the students that it is their responsibility to keep
the school safe for each other as much as it is his. He encourages
students to come to him and report anything that could be of danger.

"I get them thinking, 'We have a say in keeping our school safe,'"
DiNardo said. "What I teach them is to make the right choices."

DiNardo has been the school resource officer at Broadview since 1994.
In that time, he has never made a drug arrest at the school of 1,100
students. Arrests at the school are usually for criminal mischief or
breach of peace or assault. And they are rare, he said.

"Sometimes, a kid will pull a fire alarm. That's criminal mischief,"
he said.

DiNardo believes he plays a key role in preparing students to move on
to high school and to conduct themselves with respect for each other
and for themselves.

Danbury High School has two school resource officers inside the
building and two rotating officers who patrol the perimeter and the
parking lot at the school.