— In South Carolina, the United States District Court ruled that the failure to train a school resource officer is a proper basis for “deliberate indifference” liability for a school district and sheriff’s office. The lawsuit arose out of an incident in which a sheriff’s deputy, who ““was not the normal school resource officer,” confronted a “special needs eight-year-old minor,” who had left the classroom. While sitting in a common area of the school, the sheriff’s deputy was accused of taking “aggressive action” and “dragged the minor into the principal’s office and wrestled with the eight-year-old minor for over thirty minutes, causing bruising to the minor’s body, physical pain, and mental trauma.” The dispositive allegation in the case was that the substitute officer “received no training on how to interact with students nor special needs students and he had no experience being a school resource officer.” The court ruled that the case should not be dismissed because the “need to train school resource officers on the proper handling and restraint of special needs students was plainly obvious, and the risk of not training the officers was realized as alleged by the injuries sustained in the Complaint.”
Lauren Albright v. Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office – Magistrates Opinion
Lauren Albright v. Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office – Court Opinion
— In Utah, Utah lawmakers have set aside $72 million for school safety upgrades. Schools must apply for the funding after completing a “safety assessment” to determine their needs. “Allowable costs included infrastructure improvements, cameras, security personnel, lighting, locks and other safety measures. Schools have until June 2026 to exhaust their awards.”
— In Ohio, lawmakers have enacted the Ohio Childhood Safety Act. Among the provisions of the law are new “safety requirements for interior and exterior doors, along with requiring annual inspections.” “The law will require doors to be designed to resist forced entry, making it easy to leave and hard to get in. It would also implement new standards for alarmed locks, door hinges, and seals to also prevent fires from spreading.”
— In Florida, when the school year starts next week, Pembroke Pines elementary and middle schools will have armed guardians providing security instead of school resource officers because of a dispute with the school district. School officials believe that “it’s losing more than $2 million with that deal, so the district will provide the cheaper alternative for the elementary and middle schools.”