OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — The video of a school resource officer slamming a student to the ground that is being investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, is sparking questions in Osceola County.
More than a dozen students gathered to protest outside the Osceola County School District building, chanting things like: “We need books not bullets.”
“A lot of that is issues that school officials believe we need cops to handle, school resource officers to handle, when in actuality when we allocate that funding that is going to school resource officers that can be going to mental health counselors,” student Valeria Perez said.
Osceola County School Board Member Julius Melendez said that in light of the incident at Liberty High between a 16-year-old student and a school resource officer, he is creating a task force specifically designed to draft a new school board policy. That policy, he said, would look at the relationships of school resource officers on campus.
“They are in a controlled campus where we know who they are, we know who their parents are, we know where they live, we know what classes they take … We should be able to have a separate use of force policy that addresses those specific concerns,” Melendez said.
Melendez said it’s something that he has to make a motion for and would have to get voted on, before getting implemented.
Spectrum News 13 also spoke to Sheriff Marco Lopez who said he is working on a rough draft for more training when it comes to the engagement between SRO’s and juveniles. Not just for students on campus but children everywhere.