OFFICERS GET TO KNOW CAMPUSES

City Trying Program Instead Of DARE

A new program that puts police officers on public school campuses in
Thousand Oaks has made a smooth start, according to school and law
enforcement officials.

The city's new School Resource Officer program has assigned three
senior deputies to Thousand Oaks, Westlake and Newbury Park high schools.

The deputies share responsibility for the continuation school,
Conejo Valley High.

The school-based officers are "developing relationships with faculty
and staff," said Police Chief Dennis Carpenter.

The school officers also have a positive effect on policing in the
wider community by reducing the need for patrol officers to be
called out to deal with campus problems, Carpenter said.

Patrol units made one to two calls a day to each high school campus
during the last school year, according to Senior Deputy Joe Evans,
who supervises the school officers.

Now those calls are dealt with by a school-based officer, with other
officers providing back-up when needed, he said.

Evans said the new officers on campus have been warmly welcomed by
faculty members and students, and during the first weeks of the new
school year there has been a "great team effort" shown by the police
department and the school district, he added.

Earlier this year, the Thousand Oaks City Council followed a
recommendation by Carpenter to close the Drug Abuse Resistance
Education program in local elementary schools and replace it with
the School Resource Officer program at the high schools.

The two DARE officers were reassigned as school resource officers,
and a third officer was brought in. The city is covering the cost of
the program.

The elementary school DARE program, created in 1983, has been cut in
a number of cities over the past several years as studies suggested
it has little effect on curbing drug and alcohol use. Meanwhile,
gangs, fights and weapons have become more prevalent in high
schools, officials say.

As the new plan was being discussed, officials predicted the school
officers would build relationships with faculty members and
students, identify at-risk students and provide a mentoring program
for them, and respond to incidents and disturbances on campus.

During the first days of the new school year, the officers were
invited into classrooms by teachers to explain why there is now a
police officer on each campus.

The officers are available to visit classrooms to talk about various
issues such as drugs awareness, the dangers of binge drinking and gangs.

"We don't want kids to join gangs and do drugs," Evans said. "We
want them to go to college, have jobs and families."

Evans says the new initiative is better suited to the current
climate than the DARE program.

"DARE provided a positive contact with a uniformed police officer at
a young age," he said. "Now the priority is safety issues and in
that sense, this program is going to be better than DARE."

Evans says that with school violence on the rise generally, the role
of the school officers is preventive.

"We're not going to wait for the big event to happen," he said.

Athol Wong, principal of Newbury Park High School, said she is happy
with the positive response to the presence of Senior Deputy Chad
Bourget on campus.

"Students are coming up to him and asking him questions," she said.
"I think it's going to be the relationship between the students and
the officer that will be the most positive aspect of the program."

Wong says Bourget did question-and-answer sessions during the
"discipline talk" given to all classes at the start of the school year.

Thousand Oaks High School Principal Tim Carpenter is pleased to have
Senior Deputy Jeff Oswald at his school.

"It's great having deputies making positive connections on campus," he said.

Senior Deputy Jerry Lopez is at Westlake High School.

Although the three officers share responsibility for Conejo Valley
High School, Evans hopes that one day there will be funding for a
full-time officer at the continuation school.