New School Resource Officer –

The Challenge Of Moving From

The Patrol Car To The School Corridor

By Andrew Gorosko

The way Jason Frank sees it, he has traded in his vehicular police beat for a foot patrol, exchanging the rolling rubber of a police patrol car for shoe leather, walking the labyrinthine corridors at Newtown High School.

Mr Frank is the new school resource officer at Newtown High School, replacing Robert Koetsch who recently was promoted to the position of police detective.

Although the universe presented by the high school is significantly smaller than the length and breadth of Newtown’s road network, the high school is a much more densely populated place where roughly 1,300 students, plus school staffers, interact during the course of school days, Mr Frank observes.

 During his period of transition from the rolling police patrols, which stretched from Hawleyville to Botsford and from Dodgingtown to Sandy Hook, Mr Frank will be traversing the sprawling school from auditorium to gymnasium and from social studies classroom to cafeteria.

“It’s a change for me,” he said.

“The entire high school is my beat,” Mr Frank said this week, explaining the steps he has been taking to familiarize himself with his new work environment and its residents.

In his capacity as the school resource officer, Mr Frank will work with the high school security personnel and the school administrators in the Berkshire Road building.

His presence in the high school as a law enforcement officer provides students with an opportunity to speak to an authority figure with whom they may discuss their concerns, Mr Frank said. His presence also provides students’ parents with a person with whom they may discuss issues of concern, he added. Mr Frank can be reached by telephone through the high school’s main office at 426-7646.

Besides the law enforcement component of his position, the school resource officer also serves an educational function in the school, Mr Frank said.

This week, representatives from Garner Correctional Institution, a state high security prison on nearby Nunnawauk Road, visited the high school to explain aspects of the state Department of Correction and its operations. Later this month, a group of high school students will tour Garner to get a first-hand view of a prison as a component of the criminal justice system, Mr Frank said.

An educational police academy program also is planned to provide students with a sense of how the law enforcement component of the criminal justice system works.

Mr Frank expects to be giving talks to high school social studies classes, explaining aspects of civil rights and the science of forensics, which is used in solving crimes, among other topics.

When school is out of session, Mr Frank will be working in the police department’s detective bureau. The department’s two school resource officers and one youth officer are attached to the bureau. Gladys Pisani is the school resource officer at Newtown Middle School. Dana Schubert is the youth officer for elementary schoolchildren.

Mr Frank explains that he would like to become involved with the high school’s athletics programs in the future. A 1995 graduate of Niagara University, Mr Frank played soccer and lacrosse in college, while obtaining a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and criminology, with a minor in English. He is originally from Long Island.

Mr Frank said his immediate goal as school resource officer is to get to know people in the high school community. He said he keeps his door open at his high school office, allowing community members to visit and talk at any time; he wants high school students to feel comfortable in his presence and to feel free to discuss matters of concern.

The officer said he will serve as a resource person, assisting teachers at the school who require a person to give talks on topics within his jurisdiction.

Mr Frank, 30, who recently married, lives in the area.