Police chief commits to security in schools
The chief of the Pine Bluff Police Department told Watson Chapel School District board members that he is committed to providing the district with additional officers on campuses as needed, a week after a shooting at the junior high school severely injured and later claimed the life of 15-year-old student Daylon Burnett.
District Superintendent Jerry Guess asked Police Chief Kelvin Sergeant during Monday’s regular board meeting, which drew an overflow crowd, about the possibility of adding uniformed officers as a safety measure. Guess announced the district would add stand-alone metal detectors, such as one that screened visitors for the meeting, and hand-held detectors on campuses.
“The best help we could use would be to get uniformed officers on campus,” Guess told Sergeant. The district hires two campus security officers, one of whom works as a Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy, for Watson Chapel Junior High School.
“You have that commitment from us,” Sergeant answered. “But I want you to understand that we must have sufficient staff.”
Sergeant addressed why the Pine Bluff Police Department has not been providing school resource officers, adding the department had experienced a shortage
in staff members and called its SROs back to patrol in early 2020. The chief commended district personnel on exercising their active-shooter protocol to keep students and staff members sheltered until law enforcement officers conducted a walk-through of the campus.
“It’s not that our children are not important; our children are very important,” Sergeant said. “But as the chief of the city of Pine Bluff [Police Department], I have a vast amount of issues and concerns all across this community that I have to address, and when you call 9-1-1, one thing I cannot allow to happen is us to say that we don’t have personnel available to answer or address a call for emergency means within our community. So that’s a decision I made, which I do not believe that’s the sole reason the situation happened on March 1.”
Multiple law enforcement agencies teamed with Pine Bluff police to locate the suspect, another 15-year-old freshman. Thomas Quarles is now awaiting trial on a capital murder charge as an adult.
“You can tell the Watson Chapel School District had been doing drills,” Sergeant said. “You all acted in a manner that you should have.”
Guess gave Sergeant positive marks for the police’s response to the shooting. The first officers made it to the campus three minutes after the incident was reported, Sergeant said last week.
“A tragedy such as this is difficult to prevent,” Guess said. “The actions law enforcement took were remarkable.”
The board voted without opposition to expel Quarles from the district for one calendar year. Despite the overflow crowd, with people listening to the meeting from the front office of the administration building, no one spoke on behalf of either Burnett or Quarles.
Guess and the School Board issued a resolution to Burnett’s family, which reads in part:
“It is with deepest sympathy and tenderness of heart, that we, the superintendent, board of directors, faculty, staff and student body of the Watson Chapel School District send to the mother and siblings of Daylon Burnett these words to express our sincere sorrow in his untimely death. We are hoping that they will, in some degree give you some comfort and cheer in such dark hours as these. We are placed in this world for a limited time, and with the breath of the infant begins the race to the grave.
“We can all rejoice in that the belief and promise of God in Psalm 73:24 is now fulfilled, ‘Thy shalt guide me with Thy counsel and afterwards receive me into glory.’”
Assistant Superintendent Bill Tietz recommended the use of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to go toward extra security personnel, as well as mental health programs for students.
Frankie Hemphill, chairwoman of the Watson Chapel Personnel Policy Committee, recommended to the board replacing classroom door locks on all campuses, citing “Code Black” — the protocol the junior high campus used after the shooting.
“In Code Black, every teacher locks the door in the classroom,” Hemphill said. “Some teachers have to open up the door, get a key to turn the lock and then close the door. I recommend to every teacher to keep their door locked at all times.”