Local SRO Discusses Role of Police in Schools, Community

Police brutality is not a fun topic but it needs to be discussed. A recent video of a 16 year-old girl from Spring Valley High School in South Carolina being pulled out of her desk and thrown by a student resource officer (SRO), Senior Deputy Ben Fields shocked many and brought the seriousness of police brutality to the forefront of social discussion. Chris Major, an active SRO at Auburn Middle School, shared his thoughts about police brutality, how it affects the Auburn/Weedsport area, and how to prevent it.

Major is an SRO at Auburn Jr. High School, and has been an SRO at all levels of schooling around Auburn. Being an SRO your “priority is the safety of the kids,”  but really it’s to “make a relationship with the kid.. and be there when they need us,” Major said. “Truly our job is not to arrest kids, it’s to teach them how to have interactions with the police. So when they get older they know that we’re [the police] real people… the only image some people have of the police is what they see on the media,” Major continued. The image of policemen many people have is negative because of the media’s narrow view. The media tends to focus on the stories of policemen doing bad things, making some people believe that is all policemen do.

When asked about his thoughts on police brutality, Major responded with, “Are all cops good enough? To say that every cop is an angel is a complete lie,” and goes on to say, “Not everyone’s meant to do the job they’re doing.” There are good cops and bad cops, and most of the time the good outweighs the bad, but when a cop does something bad it is what everyone focuses on. Yes, police brutality is a terrible thing, but not all cops are like that, some just go to the extreme in situations where that’s unnecessary. The process of hiring and background checks are very different in Auburn compared to other places. Major explains, “The background process needs to be longer, and I think they need to go more in depth.”

Major was originally hired in Florida where they had a “three, four month background… up here [Auburn] it might be a couple weeks.” Being a police officer gives you a lot of power, it gives you, “The power to take away someone’s freedom… I really think education is important.” You don’t need a degree to become an officer, not that getting a degree will fix it, but having the officers get more education will help the potential officers understand what is appropriate force and what isn’t.

The context of the situation is key. When asked on how he would deal with a situation where physical force occurred, Major said he would, “get both sides of the story” and then act accordingly. With the video of Ben Fields throwing the 16 year-old girl, Major made a good point about how the video was only 15 seconds long and was purely the physical force. There was no context to what happened before Fields became violent, which is not at all trying to justify what he did, but context is necessary to understand the situation and who was at fault.

Many things can and should be done to prevent unnecessary police force. Most importantly, law enforcement should have more education and background on understanding how to handle and control situations. If they are given more education, Major believes that situations can be stopped before they occur. “If we arrest you, we fail.”