In response to the horrific school shooting on February 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida the Florida Legislature passed an Act that was signed into law by Governor Rick Scott on March 9, 2018. A key component of that law is the requirement for every school in Florida to have a School Resource Officer at the start of the 2018 School Year. Based upon the current estimate of 2,200 SRO’s statewide, the minimum need for new SRO’s to cover all 4,000 schools is 1,800. A total of $97.5 million was appropriated for this initiative.

Realizing that the allocation of $97.5 million and the time for deployment is insufficient to provide new police officers for these positions, The Integrity Group today announced that it has modified its Detail Prime services to allow School Districts and Law Enforcement agencies to meet these needs in a cost effective and timely manner.

Detail Prime for School Safety is based on the use of secondary employment of Law Enforcement Officers in public schools. This allows the “best and brightest” officers to be assigned these details—and enhance their income while serving. The statewide estimate is that this model will allow for the equivalent of over 1,800 new positions prior to start of 2018-19 School Year. The traditional, costly and time-consuming model of hiring new officers would total only about 800 positions—leaving many school unprotected.

In announcing this innovate solution, the company provided a summary of several advantages of the Detail Prime Approach, as follows:

• Allows for more than double the officer hours assigned to SRO duties.
• All selected officers would be trained and certified as School Resource Officers.
• Ability for School Superintendents, Sheriffs, Police Chiefs and State law enforcement officials to identify the best and brightest current officers for this critical program. Selected would be “proven” officers for SRO assignments. Law enforcement officers that are actively and currently working in the community (on a beat, conducting investigations, intelligence, etc.) would effectively bring those critical skills and abilities to the school environment. This is much more desirable than a new, unproven SRO.
• Timelier implementation of program (select officers, provide training and deploy). Possible to fully engage all SROs by start of 2018 School Year.
• Proper secondary duty scheduling will cover absences (designated back-ups) for not only those officers working in schools via secondary duties, but also back-up for current permanent SROs. This will avoid any negative impact on law enforcement agency staffing outside of school.
• Significant financial incentive for selected officers greatly enhancing Florida’s Law Enforcement Community.