When Shon Barnes became Madison police chief in 2021, the School Board had already removed police officers who had been stationed in each of the city’s four mainstream public high schools.
The year before, raucous protests against the school resource officers — SROs — had been visceral in the racial upheaval that followed the George Floyd murder at the hands of police in Minneapolis.
Opponents of using SROs argue that they are a key cog in the “school-to-prison pipeline,” particularly for students of color, but former Chief Noble Wray told me that officers who raised their hands for SRO assignments were those most committed to keeping young people out of the criminal justice system.
And Wray was not alone. Every Madison police official I ever talked with, including four police chiefs, have told me that only the best and brightest officers served as SROs, possessing the policing skills and emotional intelligence to make it work.