Milford Votes for Police Officers in School

The Milford board of education voted in favor of putting police officers in Milford schools on Tuesday night.

In addition to going ahead with the program, the board voted in favor of allocating $150,000 from an energy savings account to pay for the officers.

City leaders and security experts spent the night trying to explain the benefits of adding officers to Milford schools

"They've certainly made a good point as far as why we should have them in schools," said Cathy Berni, a Milford mother of four who likes the idea of school resource officers.

However, she was concerned about the $300,000 price tag.

"Something has got to give somewhere, so what are you taking away?," she asked. "And that's what concerns me."

It's a concern law enforcement officials and experts tried to ease at Tuesday's board of education meeting. 

"To an SRO, that school is their beat, where they go in in the morning and leave at night," Daniel Berstein, a forensic scientist, said.

Milford Police Chief Keith Mello talked about these school resource officers as men in uniform and as the school's first line of defense. 

"We don't want to waste those five valuable minutes. We know what five minutes means," Mello said. "Whether the firearm is behind the coat or the firearm is exposed we don't look at police officers as creating cultures of guns."

Jonathan Law High School Principal Fran Thompson supports the idea. 

"We have the opportunity to bring someone in who can make our schools their home base," he said.

But many parents are still upset that a discussion about officers in school wasn't brought up earlier.

"Show me the money where's it coming from? What are we losing?" said Berni.

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