SRO's must abide by the same policies and procedures as the rest of the police agency. These include numerous guidelines and restrictions, coupled with State laws and constant court rulings related to appropriate police behavior. To add more limitations for interacting with students only exacerbates and undermines the spirit of building strong relationships and good, two-way communication. SRO's interact with thousands of students. Naturally, some complaints will occur.
Police are human and subject to mistakes too.
However, school guidelines shouldn't be so restrictive that they create unnecessary barriers for effective communication and rapport. If there are specific problems with the way one or two officers are handling matters, then deal with those issues without altering the essence of the program. Junior high school administrators unanimously favored expanding SROs into their schools. We must give some credibility to the survey results and support the judgments of our school administrators. Sometimes this is true - but rarely.