Petoskey schools to gain second School Resource Officer

PETOSKEY — During their meeting on Monday, the Petoskey City Council approved an intergovernmental agreement that will place a second School Resource Officer (SRO) in the Public Schools of Petoskey.

A similar agreement was first made in December 2022 for Petoskey Department of Public Safety Officer Ben Carlson.

More: Public Schools of Petoskey to have full-time SRO in district

Public Safety Director Adrian Karr said he has been in talks with Petoskey Superintendent Jeff Leslie and funding has been secured for one year for the additional officer position. Karr said 50 percent of the funding for the position comes from the school district via grant dollars.

“We’ve been fortunate right now where we don’t have a whole lot of people taking vacation time in April and May and we’ve been able to pilot this,” Karr said. “So we’ve had an officer in the middle school for the past probably three weeks now … to just see how things would go, how he would be received and we’re getting rave reviews on it. We’re ready to take this step forward.”

Karr added that the new SRO would receive extra training for the position.

“It’s a lot of situational awareness as well as risk assessment and a ton of training that goes into it,” he said.

The new officer would be stationed at the middle school and also work with the elementary schools. Up until now, Carlson has been working at all of the district’s schools.

“I really think the way things have been trending in our society that the more that we can be present — at more events, as well as these individual schools and having our presence at younger ages — will be beneficial,” Karr said.

According to agenda materials, city officials said they “feel having a full-time SRO has increased school and public safety significantly, as our logged juvenile complaints have been cut drastically in the past two years.”

In Karr’s 2023 annual report, he noted a significant decrease from 2022 to 2023 in juvenile complaints.

“In 2023, we had 77,” Karr said during his March report. “I compared in 2022 (when) we had 108. So that’s quite a reduction in juvenile complaints and I think, ‘Well, what did we do differently?’ We have a full-time School Resource Officer now, so I think that made a huge impact.”

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More: Public safety director delivers annual report

City council member Lindsey Walker said she asked her son, who attends Petoskey High School, about Carlson’s impact and he was very complimentary of the officer.

“I can see why this would be a really important resource for our middle school and the elementary schools as they engage in those big community-wide activities, which could bring a certain element of danger to them as well,” she said. “I’m all about this and just hearing it from the mouth of a teenager who is very reserved about his compliments, but was very much like ‘Mr. Carlson is one of us and we feel very comfortable with him at school.’”

The council unanimously approved the agreement.

— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Petoskey schools to gain second School Resource Officer