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Massena village board doesn’t want to contract with school to provide police officer

Posted 7/26/20

BY ANDY GARDNER North Country This Week MASSENA -- The village board declined to move forward with extending their contract to provide a school resource officer at Massena Central Schools. The …

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Massena village board doesn’t want to contract with school to provide police officer

Posted

BY ANDY GARDNER

North Country This Week

MASSENA -- The village board declined to move forward with extending their contract to provide a school resource officer at Massena Central Schools.

The Massena Police Department has provided the service for the last year. Officer Jody Daggett patrolled the district, and also worked with students and staff.

Village trustees pointed to a recent change in state law that would allow the district to hire Daggett as their own employee.

“The way they describe the SRO to me now sounds like it’s not as critical that it be a police officer,” said Deputy Mayor Matt Lebire. “They still have the retired police officer … it’s literally a change in classification.”

Both Lebire and Trustee Francis Carvel said they feel since the officer provides the service at a district comprised of students beyond the village limits, the village taxpayers are paying more than they should.

“A lot of different entities go to that school … the village is left holding the bag,” Carvel said. “My opinion, we should let the school handle the whole thing. That way they basically have control over that person. We don’t really have control over that person. It makes more sense for it to be a school employee.”

“The current agreement as is leaves the village, which means village taxpayers only liable, since it is our employee,” Lebire said.

Mayor Tim Currier said he is concerned that the district and its Board of Education won’t have enough time to go through all of the necessary steps to appoint Daggett as a school worker.

“They’re still going to have policy issues they’re going to have to change and correct. That might be a daunting task to get done before the end of the school year,” Currier said.

Lebire said he thinks the district will be able to get everything in order by September.

“They seemed very happy with this person … it shouldn’t be that daunting,” he said.

When the district first started discussing bringing an armed officer into schools, school officials said that the job won’t be to mete out discipline. Lebire said that is still true today.

“They’ve been very clear that … the (SRO) role is not to be a disciplinarian,” he said.

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