With the official start of a new academic year on July 1, 2017, New Jersey schools looking to add to, or implement, a law enforcement presence on their campuses have a new option: Schools may now hire retired law enforcement officers meeting specific conditions. Thanks at least in part to the actions of the New Jersey Association of School Resource Officers (NJASRO), these officers will go into their new posts with the same training taken by sworn SROs.
This report details the new program New Jersey is implementing to allow recently-retired officers to train and be hired as SROs. The new SRO training teaches officers the ways in which school policing differs from field work, and promotes the position taken by the New Jersey Safe Schools Task Force which states that serving as an SRO is a type of community policing where the officer’s beat is in a school.
