“We’ve had some firearm recovery in schools where officers have taken away multiple firearms from students ranging in age from 8-years-old to 17-years-old,” said Norberg. “I believe in ensuring safety and that we can be there on-site as schools when incidents like that come up and if there are resources needed after and incident occurs that we can be there on site to provide additional resources to students and faculty outside of the Milwaukee Police Department.”
The 33-officer involved program has 25 full-time SROs assigned to different high schools and 8 other officers that rotate to other schools found within the the school district. Captain Norberg says the purpose of the SROs at school is to de-escalate conflict.
“They respond to fights and disturbances particularly during lunch and dismissals to ensure that the safety of the students and also that of the school staff,” said Norberg. “Our SROs are trained to spot potential problems and to prevent early escalation into serious incidents. On many times, MPS has contacted us because they hear things and have asked us to be around to help monitor those kind of situations.”