Times Observer photo by Brian Ferry Warren County Sheriff’s Office K-9 Olive explores the Warren County School District board room Monday as Sheriff Brian Zeybel speaks to the finance committee.

The school resource officer (SRO) program creates relationships, brings programming, puts a law enforcement officer on-hand in case of emergencies, and even brings a dog along some of the time.

Warren County Sheriff Brian Zeybel, SROs Chris Riche and Josh Warmath, and K-9 Olive attended the most recent meeting of the school board’s finance committee. Zeybel presented information, and a proposal, to the school board.

“This program is about building a bond with these young people,” Zeybel said. “Having an SRO is an additional resource. They have programs to warn them of drinking and taking drugs.”

For some students, the message from the SRO “may be the first time these students are going to hear about some of these bad things,” he said.

“Students are being bombarded with social disease (media),” Zeybel said. “Some of these blue pills that are floating around are literally small capsules filled with death.”

The SROs do not have an “arrest, arrest, arrest mindset,” Zeybel said. Instead, they have a “soft hand” for infractions that can “nudge” a student back onto a better path.

In addition to being in schools throughout the day, SROs attend evening and weekend events if their presence can be helpful, Zeybel said.

“In a perfect world, I’d like to see an SRO in every school,” he said.

Instead, he asked the committee and the board to consider adding a third SRO for the coming school year.

With two, “when another call comes in, scheduled events… building rapport… are being pushed aside,” he said. “These guys rarely show up for their scheduled event without handling something else.”

“A third SRO is what I’m asking for,” he said. “It would allow a full-time officer in the Warren area and in the satellite schools.”

While all three would have essentially the same roles in the schools and would be available to respond to incidents most of the time, two would be in charge of providing programming. The third would handle incidents that happen during programming. “The third would be a basic floater to allow a scheduled event to continue,” he said.

Another officer might pave the way for bringing on a second K-9, as well, he said.