Police officers to be placed inside Maricopa middle schools

Maricopa police officers will be placed inside the local school district’s two middle schools in the near future, bringing the total number of school resource officers within the department to three.

A position currently is held by an officer at Maricopa High School.

The city was recently approved for a federal grant aimed at creating new law enforcement positions. The $375,000 grant will fund three school resource officer positions over a three-year period. The city and school district will contribute required matching funds toward the grant, bringing the total funding amount for the positions to about $712,700.

The officers will be stationed at the high school, Desert Winds Middle School and Maricopa Wells Middle School. The current school resource officer position at the high school, which is funded by both the city and the school district, will be replaced with the grant-funded position.

Superintendent Steve Chestnut said safety is the primary concern for the school district when it comes to students.

“We take that responsibility pretty seriously,” he said, adding the additional police officers will contribute to safety.

The school district has agreed to contribute $40,000 annually toward the new positions over the three-year period.

Police department spokesman Ricky Alvarado said placing police officers within schools follows a national trend.

“Everywhere nationally, everybody’s been trying to get more officers to come into schools,” he said. “That’s just the nature of the beast nowadays.”

The grant comes from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services within the U.S. Department of Justice. On Sept. 19, the office announced grant awards for various Arizona police agencies, including Maricopa, totaling nearly $5.3 million.

According to a release issued by the office, the COPS Hiring Program awards grants to police agencies to hire or rehire officers. The money awarded to the Maricopa Police Department will go toward the salaries and benefits of the newly hired employees.

The city’s Grants Manager Mary Witkofski said one of the newly hired officers must be a post-Sept. 11 military veteran.

There is a possibility the officer who currently holds the school resource officer position at the high school will be replaced by a new hire to follow the grant’s stipulations, Alvarado said. However, that does not mean the officer within that position will leave the department.  

Alvarado did not have an estimate of when the new school resource officers would take up their posts. The department will first have to go through the process of hiring the new officers.