GARDENS WANTS ITS COPS TO SECURE ITS SCHOOLS
Council asks manager to check with school district on possibility.
PALM BEACH GARDENS — If Palm Beach Gardens officials have their way, city police officers — and not school police — could be patrolling all the schools in the city limits when students return to class Aug. 13.
The city has already agreed to provide Palm Beach Gardens police to patrol five area elementary schools as the district scrambles to hire extra officers.
Councilman Matthew Lane suggested the city ask the school district if they’d allow Gardens police officers to patrol middle and high schools, too.
“There’s no question we need to provide police officers to protect our children in our elementary schools. We need to do more,” Lane said. “God forbid there’s a catastrophic emergency, it would be the responsibility of our police to react. It would be better if we already had the officers in the schools, familiar with the schools and ready to react.”
Under new state law following the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, all Florida public schools are required to have armed security officers on campus, although they are not required to be certified police officers.
School police are already assigned to middle and high schools. With the district desperately seeking police officers, staffing those schools with Gardens police would free up those school police for other assignments, Lane said.
The city council agreed to ask City Manager Ron Ferris to broach the subject with the school district.
The school district did not directly answer when asked if officials would be open to allowing city police to patrol middle and
high schools.
“School Police are working with all municipalities to ensure coverage of schools at this time to ensure the mandate of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Safety Act is achieved,” the district said in a statement.
Palm Beach Gardens police live in the city, and their children attend the schools they would be patrolling. The officers could interact with the children and provide guidance, and they already know who the troublemakers are, Lane said.
Palm Beach Gardens and the school district are still negotiating an average overtime pay that the district will reimburse the city for the elementary school officers’ wages.
Lane wants the city to charge the school district an amount that covers the cost of the officers, similar to the agreement for the elementary schools.
The city will need to find out if there’s room in the budget to patrol the middle and high schools and what the reimbursement rate will be, Mayor Maria Marino said.
It’s advantageous to have Palm Beach Gardens police volunteering for school duty, she said.
“Many of our police officers have kids in the schools, and they are going to take the overtime to be protective,” Marino said.
Councilwoman Rachelle Litt asked if the city has the capability to cover the middle and high schools without depleting its manpower.
Palm Beach Gardens Police Chief Clint Shannon said that hasn’t been determined yet.
The officers patrolling the elementary schools will work seven hours a day on their days off from performing their regular duties, Shannon said. Department policies will prevent them from being overworked, he said.
The city officers will patrol Palm Beach Gardens, Allamanda, Marsh Pointe, Timber Trace and Dwight D. Eisenhower elementary schools.
Eisenhower is near Cabana Colony in what is technically an unincorporated pocket that would be typically patrolled by the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office, but the school district asked city police to patrol it. No such provision has been made yet for Grove Park Elementary School, which also is in an unincorporated area near the city limits.
Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has said he will lend 10 deputies to the school district to guard elementary schools, rejecting the district’s request for 50 officers as unrealistic.
The Palm Beach County School District recently named Frank Kitzerow police chief. Palm Beach Gardens police have a good relationship with him from his time as the Jupiter police chief, Shannon said.