Remember 2014? A throwback to a time, just nine years ago, when Montgomery County seemed “governed” by responsive adults. MoCo was still highly taxed, its small businesses burdened and frequently regulated with local ordinances that started in California, not in MD. It was still stagnating, economically, and it couldn’t hold a match to Northern VA’s growth prospects. You were still charged a nickel for a simple shopping bag at the grocery store or beer and wine shop. But, at least it was governed by people who seemed to listen (sometimes) to the actual communities and parents of MoCo. Today’s County Councilmember is more frequently in the service of the special-interest “non-profit” tax money-taking mob, not the ordinary, tax-paying adult.
Remember the Wheaton / Silver Spring / Takoma Park Gazette Newspapers? It closed shop in 2015, once it was sold. Anyways, certain past issues can thankfully be found online. Such as this gem from September 17, 2014. On page A-10, an article by Lindsay A Powers begins:
Actual reporting on a day in the life of a police officer in a Montgomery County high school. No anti-SRO smearing going on here, such as then-“very online and loud” activist Kristin Mink’s “testimony” to the Board of Education in 2021. Such testimony was based on a report posted to an advocacy education website that referenced an inconclusive academic study done on data from a Texas school district.
No, in this on-the-ground reporting by Lindsay Powers, the young people at Northwest High generally got along with the officer assigned to the Northwest High ‘beat’. There was broad trust in the officer, and many school staff, including the school counselor at the time, enjoyed working with Officer Wojdan.
But what caught my eye and was the genesis for this post was this interesting ending quote by then-councilmember Elrich where he claims the program has “a lot of community support”. Mr. Elrich then says the SRO program / funding can’t really be judged because we don’t know “whether or not SROs played a part if schools don’t experience dangerous incidents.”
This statement shows that Mr. Elrich never understood what a deterrent measure or control is versus a detective or corrective one. The reason why a deterrent control, like a School Resource Officer program, is in place is to provide a broad level of resistance and deterrence to a brutish and probably low-sophistication violent criminal or an impulsive adolescent with really bad short-term judgment.
Can an in-school officer prevent all violent or dangerous incidents in a school setting? No, but that was never the bet. The ‘bet’ was that the deterrent control would probably make even slow-witted, impulsive and aggressive violent actors think a bit harder about conducting such reprehensible actions on a school campus, as even they know it can be met by deterrent force. By forcing that “pause” and retreat (perhaps to another unguarded setting, unfortunately), the deterrent control works, for the most part (a really sophisticated, well-coordinated attack by bad actors is an entirely different level of threat). The absence of many multiple dangerous incidents on a school’s campus is the SRO “playing a part” to quote Mr. Elrich.
Until 2020, Montgomery County politicians seemed to understand this basic policy of deterrence. Then, local activists used a national storyline to push CE Elrich and others to rescind the SRO program. A false narrative of ‘counselors not cops’ was pushed – but the choice was never either / or. Sure, funding priorities would have to be made – but these two groups have always worked in tandem, as the Northwest High School story from 2014 above indicates. In April of 2022, after an in-school shooting at Magruder High School (the first in Montgomery County public school history), “Community Resource Officers” were brought back to school campuses and a new memorandum of understanding was signed between MCPS and Montgomery County police.
Marc Elrich’s incoherence on this issue was evident all the way back in 2014. And it is a shame it wasn’t highlighted more via the article. While we appreciate the ol’ Gazette newspapers and their reporting on this topic, it was a missed opportunity to scrutinize then-Councilmember (and future County Executive) Elrich’s mindset on public safety and policy ideation, further.
More to come.
