Fullerton : Uniformed Police Officers to Be Stationed at Schools

Two Fullerton police officers will be in uniform when they assume a new role next September, but they won’t carry guns.

The officers will become full-time teachers in Fullerton’s kindergarten through eighth-grade classes. The lesson: Say no to drugs.

A third uniformed officer, who will carry a gun, will be assigned to the high schools and will have a more conventional police role, Lathrop said. That officer will visit the high school campuses on a rotating schedule and will be on the lookout for alcohol and drug abuse, as well as truancy and vandalism.

The plan that will place the two teaching officers in the elementary and junior high schools and one regular officer in the high schools is the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. The program in Fullerton, the first in Orange County, is patterned after a similar setup in Los Angeles.

The officers will give weekly lectures, have lunch with the students and play with them during recess, said Fullerton police Sgt. Bud Lathrop.

In Los Angeles, where the police and school district began a similar program two years ago, there is now “more respect for police, less vandalism and more resistance to drugs,” Los Angeles Police Sgt. Frank Whitman said.

The Fullerton officers will lecture children in second, fourth, sixth and eighth grades. The sixth-graders will get the most attention, Lathrop said, because it’s at that age that children begin to feel peer pressure to experiment with drugs, he said.

The program will cost the Fullerton police department about $188,000 a year, Lathrop estimated.