Increased attention has been given the safety of students and school staff members following highly publicized acts of violence within schools, including the mass shootings at Robb Elementary School in 2022, Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, and Columbine High School in 1999. In response to these tragic events, schools have implemented various…

National context: Schools across the United States have long grappled with the role and impact of school-based police officers, often referred to as school resource officers (SROs). Proponents for school-based policing believe that SROs contribute to school safety by preventing or addressing crime and violence in schools. Opponents of SROs in…

The article is devoted to the study of the issue of training future police officers to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in their professional activities. Based on the results of the theoretical analysis of scientific and applied works, modern trends in the development of drones in the activities of law enforcement agencies were identified, and…

The use of law enforcement in schools raises concerns about impacts on school discipline. Drawing on a large-scale qualitative study of approximately fifty schools across two school districts, this study explores school resource officers' (SROs') involvement in school discipline and how it is shaped by their context. We use interview, focus group,…

Background: Our objective is to describe violence-related injuries to early adolescents that occurred at school, resulting in emergency department (ED) evaluation. Methods: This retrospective cohort study at an urban academic pediatric ED in Baltimore, MD, identified patients 10-15 years old who presented with an injury from intentional,…

Research and news stories document harmful, racialized encounters between campus police and minoritized populations. However, little is known about how campus police officers perceive racial dynamics in their work. As part of a critical case study of campus police at one historically white private university, theories of racial ideology guided the…

Although research on the effectiveness of school resource officers (SROs) remains mixed, the number of SROs in the U.S. continues to grow. We interviewed 18 SROs, SRO supervisors, and school leaders from exemplar programs to explore SRO role perceptions. Analysis revealed three themes: (1) SROs support a safe learning environment via multiple…

U.S. public school students increasingly attend schools with sworn law enforcement officers present. Yet little is known about how these school resource officers (SROs) affect school environments or student outcomes. Our study uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design with national school-level data from 2014 to 2018 to estimate the…

This applied dissertation was designed to investigate the perceptions of school resource officers (SROs) in Southern Maryland regarding the support SROs could provide elementary schools to foster positive interpersonal relationships while maintaining school safety and what additional resources that the SROs needed to support their job. The overall…

Adult's self-direction and self-directed learning (SDL) have become topics in the discussion of work-related adult learning and an autonomous approach, emphasizing responsibility and independence, has received increasing attention in studies of learning. In the context of SDL, in contrast, the importance of the learning environment and community…

Criminal activity is seasonal, peaking in the summer and declining through the winter. We provide the first evidence that arrests of children and reported crimes involving children follow a different pattern: peaking during the school year and declining in the summer. We use a regression discontinuity design surrounding the exact start and end…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Fair Discipline." Contents include: (1) At What Cost? A Review of School Police…

Equal opportunity and treatment in law enforcement began in the 1970s with targeted hiring drives toward women and other minority groups. The indoctrination to this line of work begins with police academy training, where cadets are subject to a paramilitary environment for many months. This dissertation explores how women perceive their role and…

Since the 1950s, police presence in American schools has increased in the form of school resource officers (SROs). Some schools have elected to staff SROs on their school grounds, while others have chosen to avoid police presence at their school site. It is poorly understood how school administrators make decisions about staffing SROs in their…

This work provides an overview of the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology in the context of training through the documentation of a project produced by Ohio University's Game Research and Immersive Design (GRID) Lab involving the development of a cine-VR series for police officer training in areas such as suicide prevention, mental health,…