Broken Arrow Public Schools Hires Retired Police Officers To Work Security For The District

Broken Arrow Public Schools is changing the way it's keeping students and staff safe while they are at school. While security is a fairly common sight at schools, Broken Arrow Public Schools has primarily employed the services of off-duty police officers to act as security.

Now, Broken Arrow Public Schools has brought on retired police officers to work security full-time for the district.

Scott Bross is one of the retired officers. Bross had been on the force for 25 years before deciding to retire. However, after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Bross thought of his five grandchildren and how that could've happened to them.

Bross knew then, after what he described as soul searching, that he wanted to do what he could to keep school children safe. That's when he found out that Broken Arrow Public Schools was bringing in retired police officers to work security.

Bross reached out to his old supervisor at the Broken Arrow Police Department, Jeff Martin, who now acts as the Broken Arrow Public Schools Campus Security Coordinator, to see if he could help work security.

"I’ve got five grandkids which also probably directed my decision to the point where now I’m in with the elementary schools and the early learning centers, and when I reached out to Jeff, I told him ultimately that’s where I wanted to end. I’m going to end up in the schools with that age group because I think we haven’t been able to really get into those schools in a while," Bross said.

Martin believed that bringing in officers full-time would not only provide security for students and staff on campus but also a level of comfort and familiarity. Martin also knew that having officers who retired from the Broken Arrow Police Department would make communication easier from the security officer to the police department since the two officers would likely already be familiar with each other.

"When officers are responding to a school for any reason, they already have somebody there that they know. They have from a police background know some of the information that they are going to need right away," Martin said.

Bross said that after working with the kids for several months now, he considers the kids and staff part of his extended family and he wants to do everything to make sure that they return home in as good of condition or better than when they arrived at school.