Why there was no SRO at North Marion Middle during parking lot shooting

A shooting in the parking lot of North Marion Middle School on May 22 left one man dead and another man was taken into custody [Jennifer Hunt Murty].

After a shooting took place in the parking lot of North Marion Middle School during an evening awards ceremony on May 22, the “Gazette” questioned why a school resource officer wasn’t present at the school to provide security.

SROs, deputies from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office and officers from local police departments, provide security to schools on a daily basis. Marion County Public Schools has agreements with law enforcement to provide at least one officer for each school, as mandated by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Safety Act.

The contract with MCPS, renewed every three years, provides for one or two SROs to be stationed at 33 of Marion County’s elementary, middle and high schools, with 39 SROs total.The rest of the schools in MCPS are provided SROs through separate contracts with the Ocala Police Department and the Belleview Police Department.

The contracts only require the SROs to be stationed on campus during regular school hours, for a maximum of eight hours a day. If the school is having an event after-hours that the principal deems law enforcement should be present for, the principal would have to make a request in advance for a special detail and pay MCSO $65.

“From time to time they do that, and many of our local private schools also do the same thing,” said MCSO spokesperson Lt. Paul Bloom.

The district’s contract provides for SROs to be in schools during most “pressing” time of need, while school is in session, said School Board Chair Nancy Thrower.

“Anything that costs money affects our budget. However, we must prioritize for the most important, if needed, and pressing things,” Thrower said.

A special detail was not requested for the after-hours awards ceremony that took place at North Marion Middle School, where a man was shot and killed in the parking lot.

Thrower said that she felt that even if an SRO was present at the time of the shooting, they may not have been able to intervene as they would likely be present inside where the students were gathered.

Special details are typically requested by school principals for events where they anticipate a large turnout, as a means of safety and crowd control, Thrower said.

“They only go for certain matters for big athletic events like football games and things like that where we’re expecting large crowds,” Thrower said.

“It’s very important to the district to have individual school leadership, which would be principals, to have a voice and articulate the needs of their schools,” Thrower said. “So that request (for a special detail) would be something that if it came from a school, it would certainly be evaluated and taken very seriously.”

The salary for each deputy who serves as an SRO in schools is $60,000 for the first year and $75,000 for the second and third years, and the school board reimburses MCSO for those costs.

For the three-year contract with MCSO, the district paid $8.2 million to account for these costs; $2.34 million is spent for the first year, and $2.93 million is spent for the second and third years each, according to the contract.