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Ex-officers in
schools working
well, official says

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By Christine Donnelly
Star-Bulletin

A pilot program putting retired police officers in charge of security at public schools has meant better-trained security guards and quicker legal advice for principals not sure how to handle some student misconduct, a Department of Education official said.

"When a student feels safe in school, that student ... will learn better," said DOE safety and security chief Melvin Seo, who gave a status report on the school safety manager program to a Board of Education committee yesterday.

Seo said the safety managers brought much-needed legal and law enforcement expertise and improved the security guard ranks by fine-tuning their training and supervision.

The three-year pilot program began in 12 high schools last April; 11 middle schools were added this school year. The program's operation is contracted out to KMK Associates, a private investigation and security firm owned by Keith Kaneshiro, the former head of Hawaii's Department of Public Safety.

He said school principals and vice principals are "starving for legal guidance" and must wait too long for help from the attorney general's office on such questions as how to discipline special education students, who have broader rights than regular students.

"They make decisions without legal guidance, and I think it could lead to disaster in the future," Kaneshiro said, adding that his firm offers quick legal advice to the schools in the program.

(No one was available for reaction from the attorney general's office after office hours yesterday.)

Kaneshiro also noted that a "small minority" of school administrators avoided reporting misconduct, either because they do not believe it is serious enough to report, did not realize when it reached the level of a crime, or believe reporting it will reflect poorly on them. Misconduct escalates when kids know they won't be reported, he said.

He said some security guards lack previous training, especially on legal issues such as the use of force and search and seizure. And before the school safety managers came aboard, many were ill-supervised, he said, "talking story" when they should have been separately patrolling the campus.

The safety managers provided better training and organized the guards so they would be more visible to students, he said.

As for student misconduct, Kaneshiro said some of the most common problems were smoking, drug use, littering, bullying and "hijacking," especially in campus bathrooms.

The safety managers swiftly applied ways to control those problems, he said, including outlawing loitering by the bathrooms, which meant the students dealing drugs inside had no lookouts. He said one school suspended 21 students for marijuana use.

Kaneshiro said bullying was one of the most insidious problems, and it must be addressed because some victims become suicidal while others react by threatening or even killing fellow students.

One bullied student threatened to kill a fellow student but the school intervened right away, calling the police as well as providing psychological intervention. The student is now back at school and doing well, he said. Kaneshiro did not name any of the schools where the incidents occurred.