Judge Steve Teske: The Blame Game – The Winner Loses and The Kids are Hurt
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It was 1999, I was recently appointed to the juvenile bench, and we had a new presiding judge. A meeting was called to discuss the direction of the court. Among several issues, we were concerned about the number of complaints filed by School Resource Officers (SRO) and decided to meet with the Chief of Police to discuss other alternatives to filing complaints. We were prepared for the meeting. We had data reflecting an increase in referrals by over 1,000 percent since the inception of the SRO program in the mid nineties. The data was broken down by offenses and most were misdemeanors primarily involving school fights, disorderly conduct, and disrupting public school.