School resource officers added to 3 TUSD schools

Three TUSD schools are getting school resources officers under a new agreement between the district and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff Chris Nanos offered to post deputies at Valencia and Pistor middle schools on the southwest side as well as Sabino High School — at no cost to the district — saying it’s important for young people to have positive interaction with law enforcement.

Nanos said he hopes such relationships lessen the chance young people will be incarcerated.

“My role as the sheriff is to provide for a safer community,” he said. “The best way to do that is to be involved, and we need to be involved with our youth … I come here to ask for your help to help me help this community.”

Deputies will provide lessons on juvenile delinquency, safety and substance-abuse prevention — an issue common among Pima County jail inmates. Nanos said drug use, along with mental health issues, raise the recidivism rate — the rate at which people end up back in jail or prison.

“I have a facility here known as the Pima County jail that houses almost 2,000 inmates,” he said. “And I have an opportunity to either go to the voters and say, ‘We need another 700 beds at about $250 million’ or I can take a look at what are we doing here. Who are we putting in that jail and why are we doing it?”

The school resource officers will collaborate with schools to solve problems on campus, in surrounding neighborhoods, at bus stops and after school.

The Governing Board approved the arrangement Tuesday night. The district already has Tucson police officers on eight campuses. A $2.2 million, three-year grant from the Arizona Department of Education pays for those officers.

The Sheriff’s Department’s school resource officers will be worth more than $313,000 to TUSD.

TUSD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez called the offer an “amazing outreach of goodwill,” especially in light of school shootings across the country.

“When you think about our schools Valencia, Pistor and Sabino, they’re far out in our county, and in a lot of cases in the police profession they’re referred to as ‘soft targets’ because people aren’t on campus who are armed,” Sanchez said.

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“When you think about the response time in getting to these campuses that are quite a ways out, it would provide coverage, support and safety for those schools, those students and those families — and truly anything that occurs in the area — because you have the deputies in proximity to other schools.”

Though board members agreed with Sanchez, concerns about immigration enforcement on campuses weighed heavily on some of them.

In 2007 a TUSD student and his family were deported after school officials found that the student had illegal drugs and contacted Tucson police. After learning the boy and his family were in the country illegally, Tucson police called Border Patrol to the school to take the family into custody.

“I really want these deputies as a resource and someone that students can go to if they’re having a concern,” TUSD Governing Board President Adelita Grijalva told Nanos.

“Have you selected deputies for these positions that have the mindset of being resources to the students and protecting the students versus some experience we’ve had not just in TUSD but across the state in other districts, where the officers are there more as enforcement?”

The Sheriff’s Department’s focus is not immigration, Nanos said, adding that criminals, regardless of where they are from, will face justice. Victims, he said, will receive the same service as anyone else the department deals with.

“I’m not going to get political here,” Nanos told the board.

“I’m simply stating the fact that we understand there are issues out there that are at a national level that concern everyone. My concern is this county and our kids — that they get a good education, that they’re safe and that they become productive model citizens,” he said. “I don’t need model prisoners, I need model citizens.”

Part of the written contract for the school resource officers says law enforcement action will be discreet and TUSD will handle non-criminal matters, such as discipline or class disruptions.

School resource officers will attend district training sessions to familiarize them with TUSD practices.