Lewis County legislators offer Copenhagen district alternative to school resource officer

Jul. 26—LOWVILLE — A third Lewis County school district wants to bring a sheriff's deputy school resource officer on board with the county's financial help. But the county is not so sure.

After the lengthy debate of three potential existing civil service titles that could fulfill the role — school resource officer, school patrol officer and school safety officer — legislators on the General Services Committee meeting Tuesday passed a resolution to offer Copenhagen Superintendent Scott Connell a school patrol officer rather than the resource officer he had requested.

Although the school patrol officer can perform essentially the same duties as a school resource officer, legislator Ian Gilbert noted from the information provided by County Manager Ryan M. Piche to the committee, the cost would be about four times less, primarily because school patrol officers are hired only for the school year whereas the resource officer is a sheriff's deputy who works all year long.

Like the resource officer, the school patrol officer would be an employee of the county and would qualify as active duty for a retired officer of the peace which includes retired police officers, corrections officers, probation officers and others as potential candidates.

In the board's regular meeting this month, a resolution was passed approving new SRO agreements with the South Lewis and Harrisville central school districts.

Those districts have had SROs in place since 2017 and 2018, respectively, through agreements that evolved out of a grant funding stream for South Lewis that gave them 55% of the SRO cost based on the number of days or hours that the SROs would work at the school. Harrisville was offered the same agreement because South Lewis' grant, and therefore the agreement, was for four years and it was believed by the board that the same deal should be made to be fair.

The county agreed to pay the remaining 45% of the compensation with the understanding that the deputy would work on the county's recreation patrol during school's off-months.

The schools contracted the SRO's services for 1,440 hours, the equivalent of 180 work days, leaving 440 hours, or 11 weeks of service, for the recreation patrol after subtracting 200 hours of vacation, personal and sick time contractually for the officer.

In both cases, the resource officers did not meet their Rec Patrol commitments, primarily because Sheriff Michael P. Carpinelli has required the two deputies to fill in for road patrol deputies going on vacation in the summer or sick days. The sheriff said he is trying to avoid paying overtime to other road patrol deputies to do the coverage, he said in an interview after the first meeting between legislators, school officials and the sheriff's office in May.

Sheriff Carpinelli has maintained for years that he is understaffed and the department has been reprimanded for going over the department's budget because of overtime hours.

The county argues that there are a number of part-time positions that have been created for road patrol to help with coverage that have not been filled, which the sheriff says is nearly impossible because part-time officers are usually working somewhere else, limiting their availability.

Regardless of the ongoing staffing debate, the SRO agreements with both schools stipulated the use of the deputies for recreation patrol during the summer and school breaks when trails are the most busy, which did not happen, according to statistics provided by the board in the newest agreement resolution.

"When we started out, this was a win-win situation, I thought, but we found out different than that. It's not a win-win situation. It's just costing us x amount of dollars and we're not getting what we thought we would," Committee Chairman Legislator Jerry King said.

In the summer of 2020, the deputy who worked as the South Lewis resource officer spent 44.5 of their 465 hours available at the end of the school year for recreational trail patrol: eight hours on the ATV trails and 10 on snowmobile trail law enforcement.

The Harrisville SRO had 333 hours available for trail enforcement at the end of the school year but only provided 20% of those hours for recreation and all 68.5 of those hours were for "marine patrol." No time at all was spent monitoring ATV trails.

To mitigate the problem, the latest resolution has more terms for accountability including increased reporting by both the school districts of the SROs working data and the Sheriff's Office on scheduling, activities and incidents to the county manager; 75% of the recreation patrol time, which should be all non-school time, should be on trail enforcement and 25% on marine enforcement primarily from Wednesday to Sunday and holiday Mondays, when trails are the most busy.

If the SROs do not put in the required time patrolling ATV trails during non-school days, the county has "the unilateral right to immediately terminate the contract."

Even with these safeguards in place, legislators are hesitant to enter an agreement with the Copenhagen School District anticipating similar problems.

If Mr. Connell and the Copenhagen District decide they only want a school resource officer, then, the committee members said, the school will have to pay an increased amount, which is likely to be 75%.

Future agreements with South Lewis and Harrisville will reflect the new model being created with Copenhagen.

The board is expected to make a final decision after receiving a response from Mr. Connell and pass a resolution in its August meeting so there is time to find whichever type of officer is needed before the start of school.

Mr. Connell could not be reached for comment.