[06/12/01] Some Vicksburg students may see police officers full-time in hallways when the new school year begins on Aug. 14.

City officials voted unanimously Monday to seek grant money to place police officers in Warren Central Junior High School, Vicksburg Junior High School and Vicksburg High School for the next three years.

All three Vicksburg Warren School District facilities are in the city limits. All other public schools, except Bowmar Elementary, are outside police jurisdiction.

School trustees agreed last week to see the help through U.S. Department of Justice’s COPS office and Police Chief Mitchell Dent explained the program to city officials. The deadline for receiving applications is June 15.

Dent said the program will also assist officers in gaining information about incidents that happen at the schools that may lead to youth violence elsewhere.

Since fatal shootings at schools, including in Columbine and Pearl, Miss., the awareness for safety has risen, said Mike Ouzts, school safety administrator for the district.

Although there have been no reported cases of violence with weapons at schools here, reports of drug and alcohol use by faculty and students at the Center for Alternative Programs was cited by the last grand jury. School officials have made no response to the grand jury’s report in their public meetings or otherwise. The alternative school is at the former Bovina Elementary.

The police department is asking for $285,487 as its COPS grant. The money will pay for hiring, salaries, benefits and training of the the school resource officers for three years. The officers’ equipment and other supplies will be paid for by the city.

Police in the schools must be at least 23 years old and commissioned as law enforcement officers with at least three years’ experience.

The Mississippi Department of Education is also requiring the officers to attend a 40-hour school resource officer training class.

Although an officer would not be placed at the district’s second high school, Warren Central, under the grant, Ouzts said that school may get an officer in the future.

“If it works out well, we may expand the resource officers to other schools,” he said, including elementary schools.

Warren Central and the Center for Alternative Programs do have uniformed security guards on campus.

Ouzts said he made only minor changes to the first memorandum that the school board received from Dent, making sure there is an open line of communication between the police department and the office of the school safety administrator.

The COPS program began after then-President Clinton pledged in August 1994 to put 100,000 additional police officers on America’s streets.

In February 2001, the Department of Justice awarded $70 million in grants that would hire 640 new police officers to work in the nation’s schools.