Memoirs of a Playground Cop

A Day in the Life of a School Police Officer

Most students lack any form of discipline or restraint in the classroom. Parents condone their childrens behavior. School administrators exhibit a god complex, and school police officers are caught in between the web of school politics that often interferes in enforcing the law equally to all. Today, students adverse behavior in the classroom no longer constitutes a delinquent conduct as per classroom discipline management rules, but rather, an act that has manifests itself into a criminal offense. Students are empowered to act bad when their own parents themselves refuse to correct their childrens maladaptive behavior by blaming others for their short comings. And this problem is further exasperated by school administrators who either use a strong arm tactic to curtail the problem or a too soft a hand to make an impression to get a child to exhibit positive behavior in the classroom. School administrators have a God complex where they walk around their campus expecting everyone, including school police officers, to do their biting. School administrators try to instill their own brand of justice by picking and choosing which students are to be charged with a criminal offense while others are allowed to continue their maladaptive behaviors. School police officers find themselves in a very precarious situation where they must wear different hats to address different issues that arise in the classroom. School police officers are like band-aides that are place on a wound, it is a cure all fix all approach to making problems go away, unfortunately, when dealing with the school community school police officers, and law enforcement in general, cannot use a band-aide to make things better as police work in a school setting is a web of complex issues that fosters misunderstanding among members of the school and law enforcement communities.