SRO Report by Sheriff Lott

At 0:27:55 on the January 28 Board Meeting video-recording, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott was introduced to report on school resource officers (SROs).

The RCSD point-of-contact with the Richland 2 School District is Cleveland Smith. Chief Administrative Services Officer.

Twenty-seven SROs cover 22 schools, including four schools added to the SRO program last month. RCSD has a total of 90 SROs which, Sheriff Lott mentioned, is more deputies than many departments in the state have in their whole department. He mentioned that SROs teach (some) classes, including the DARE Program.

Five weapons have been confiscated in Richland 2 schools this year, including one gun.

Trustee Agostini asked Sheriff Lott how can the seriousness of "kidding-type" threats be gotten across to students; i.e., that a threat is not a joke. He said that Lexington 5 produced a video that was distributed to students.

Note to Teresa Holmes and Board members; Mute your microphones when there is a speaker at the podium.

Holmes made a gushing expression of appreciation to Sheriff Lott.

It should be remembered that Holmes went to the Sheriff's Department in March 2019 and filed a frivolous report of harassment against me. The Sheriff's Department quickly determined that her report had no merit. RCSD should have filed charges against her for false reporting, because the report contained numerous lies. You can read all about that right here.

It seems to me that Trustee Elkins-Johnson requested information from the Administration about the costs of having deputies at the school board meetings. I wonder if she ever got the details.