PROGRAM AIMS TO STRENGTHEN TIES BETWEEN STUDENTS, POLICE

NEWPORT -- Police are spending more time in Newport Schools these days,
eating lunch and chatting with students in an effort to show children
and teens that police are their supporters and friends.

The move is a joint program between the school district and the city
to add schools to the daily beat of city police. Newport also is
applying for federal and state grants that would pay to assign a
police officer to every school.

Officer Jim Snider, the department's only full-time DARE officer, said
he wants students to have positive encounters with police. The officer
for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program spent Monday morning
talking with a high school freshman health class about drug and
alcohol abuse.

"Don't think I'm here to gather intelligence," Officer Snider said.
"What's said in this class stays in this class."

Monday's lesson focused on supply and demand.

Students talked with him about the drugs they see most often:
marijuana, alcohol, tobacco and pills.

If kids come to school drunk and high, is it tolerated?

No, students told him.

Does it happen?

Yeah, but it's not obvious.

Superintendent Dan Sullivan said that's the kind of frank discussion
he wants to encourage. He wants police to stop into schools whenever
they are nearby. And the police and schools are applying for grants to
increase police presence in schools.

"This is not a fear program, but the fact that our people have got to
understand that respect for others is important," Mr. Sullivan said.
"Police and law enforcement are there for the right reasons."

An increasing number of Kentucky schools are adding "school resource
officers," according to the state's Center for School Safety.

A recent survey found that of the 400 police agencies in the state,
33.5 percent have school resource officer programs in place. Of those
programs, 42.3 percent are less than a year old.

An additional 16.7 percent of police departments plan to start school
resource officer programs.

The majority of the resource officers are assigned to multiple
schools. Their jobs include security and teaching about safety, drugs,
gangs and the law.

On Monday, Officer Snider talked with students about Newport's
reputation for having crime and drug problems, and things they can do
to change it.

"Every urban are has its problems. Every rural area has its problems,"
Officer Snider said. "We are no different from any other place. But
there's that reputation. What you have to remember is that all of you
are role models."