Expand School Policing, State Lawmakers Told

School resource officers—policemen assigned full-time to the schoolhouse—play a key role in preventing sex abuse and should expand their "beat" to include elementary schools, a State Assembly task force meeting in Chappaqua heard.

The SROs, as they are called, traditionally focus on high schools and middle schools. But at a roundtable discussion held in New Castle Town Hall July 22, a Westchester County police detective recommended that the program go "even further" to encompass especially vulnerable children in the elementary school grades.

The roundtable was hosted by Assemblyman Robert J. Castelli (R-Goldens Bridge).

"I think we need them in the elementary schools," detective Tim Guerra told a nine-member ad hoc panel of state and local officials and representatives from law enforcement and education who assembled for the discussion. "They (the children) are so eager to listen and to talk to somebody else."

Guerra, who was joined by detective Simone Guiseppi of the county's sex-offender management unit, said he didn't believe "anything is being done in the elementary schools." He described children that age as vulnerable, unable to understand the dangers of things like "family touching."

"That's the population that is being forgotten," he said.

Castelli, himself a former state policeman, agreed with Guerra on the value of a police presence in the elementary schools. "I like your idea of SROs in the lower grades," he said. "That's the target age for predators."

In addition to Castelli, Thursday's panelists were New Castle Supervisor Barbara Gerrard and her chief of police, Charles Ferry; Mount Kisco Police Chief Steven J. Anderson; Dr. Anne Lillis, assistant superintendent of pupil services in White Plains; Dr. Bill Donohue, assistant superintendent of the Byram Hills Central School District; Councilman Terrence Murphy and Town Justice Anthony Lagonia, both of Yoktown; and Assemblyman Greg Ball (R-Patterson). Castelli's 89th District comprises the towns of Harrison, North Castle, New Castle, Bedford, Mount Kisco, Pound Ridge and Lewisboro and part of the City of White Plains. 

Castelli and Ball are both members of the Assembly Republican "Sex Offender Watch" Task Force. At public forums like Thursday's town hall meeting, the task force has been gathering information from law enforcement officials, district attorneys, advocacy groups, victims, parents and grandparents to strengthen existing laws, create new protections and close loopholes.

Castelli asked whether extending SROs into elementary grades might meet with parental resistance, but Byram Hills' Donohue said he did not think that would be the case. Earlier, he had described the SROs in his district as having built a "close relationship" with parents.

Ball, the Patterson assemblyman, touched on the extraordinary pressures being placed on the young. "You either have an environment where children feel comfortable coming forward or you don't. . . . It's also, 'Do I turn in my dad, turn in my uncle?' " he said.