Virginia Beach’s school system will add five armed security officers to its ranks, to ease the loss of some school resource officers.
Under the School Security Officer program, current security assistants can move into SRO positions and be armed while on duty if they have previous law enforcement experience. At this point, the division has identified five security assistants who qualify.
Virginia Beach schools began moving forward with this process in April, identifying at least 15 assistants who qualified. Training with the city’s police department took place earlier this month.
This comes after the police department removed some officers from schools to conduct patrols amidst staffing shortages.
Thomas DeMartini, director of Safe Schools, told the board on April 5 that there was a plan to ensure adequate response to critical situations, including planned patrols by police officers.
DeMartini explained that the SROs should return in the fall, and these newly armed officers would “bolster” security when that happens.
“Common sense tells us, the closer an officer is to a conflict, the quicker a resolution can occur,” DeMartini said in the April meeting.
School officials did not give some details about the plan, including where the security officers would work, citing safety concerns.
These discussions took place in the hours following the Texas elementary school shooting which left at least 19 children and two teachers dead.
According to the division’s website, each school has a security assistant to monitor who is coming in and out of the school buildings and ensuring safety protocols throughout the day. SROs are uniformed officers who work on-site in middle and high schools and are available for elementary schools.
