The Goose Creek Police Department announced the agency was awarded a $638,770 grant from the South Carolina Department of Public Safety to provide additional School Resource Officers, or SROs.
GCPD reports it is the third year in a row the department has received money to increase the grant-funded positions. The city can offer five new SROs instead of the two for which the grant previously paid. The money will also be used to purchase three new patrol vehicles.
The schools that will get an SRO as a result of the grant are Carolyn Lewis School, Howe Hall AIMS Elementary and Westview Elementary School.
The department’s annual report in 2022 showed it had two full-time school resource officers (SRO) assigned to Stratford High School, one full-time SRO assigned to Westview Middle School.
In addition, the agency has one full-time SRO assigned to Marrington Elementary/Marrington Middle School, and one grant-funded SRO position at Goose Creek Elementary School.
During the 2022 school year, the department reported an SRO position was added at Mever’s School of Excellence and Boulder Bluff Elementary School.
There is a supervising lieutenant that floats between all nine schools in the city limits, according to a press release. The annual report shows the SROs wrote 291 incident reports for varying issues in 2022, which is a 61% increase from 2021.
In 2019 there were 85 incident reports, in 2020 there were 37, and 181 incident reports in 2021. The increase was the result of a proactive approach within the schools as well as the addition of new schools, according to a press release.
