Chief's Chat #37: What it Takes to Have an Award-Winning School Resource Officer Program

School safety gets talked about like it’s only locks, radios, and worst-case scenarios, but the truth is more human and more demanding. Hosts Lisa Greenberg and Officer Mercedes Simonds sit down with Chief Anthony Sizemore to unpack what makes a School Resource Officer effective when the job requires two extremes at once: the ability to respond instantly to danger and the patience to earn trust with kids who may be meeting law enforcement for the first time.

We share a story that captures the spirit of the work: Officer Syd Wilcox being surprised with a VFW 'Officer of the Year' honor and why his retirement feels so big to his school community. From there, we dig into what it takes to run an award-winning SRO program in Cape Coral: elite standards, ongoing training, campus drills, crisis intervention skills for youth, and tight partnerships with the Lee County School District and charter schools. We also explain why the assignment is specialized, sought-after, and built on continuity, so relationships can grow over years instead of resetting every year.

The conversation goes deeper into the parts people rarely see: hundreds of counseling sessions, sitting in on tough meetings with students and parents, doing threat assessments, and making careful decisions that protect a campus without unnecessarily criminalizing a kid. We also highlight a standout example of trauma-informed support: SRO James Cannon helping launch parenting classes alongside school leaders and youth mental health professionals to meet real community needs.

Transcript

Welcome And Trial Check-In

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Copcast Chiefs Chat Edition.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

I'm Lisa Greenberg, and I'm one of your hosts, Officer Mercedes Simons, and today we have Surprise Surprise Chief for Chiefs Chat. How's it going? Good, good morning.

A Surprise VFW Honor

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Um, busy. Good. Um, we have a uh major trial that's underway right now. So just real quick, uh Kayler Rincohn Miller's uh murder trial. I had the opportunity um the first day to go. I do this with all the big cases as I went and sat with the family. I sat with uh mom and dad in the courtroom just to let them know that we're still here, right? And you see the headlines, you see the case, and there's an arrest made, and sometimes people will move on. Right. Uh comes back in the headlines when when trial comes, but we're still a part of that. We're a major part of that. We um handed over on the driver's seat to the state attorney's office, but we're still a big passenger in this uh in this vehicle. So um it's going well, and we'll I'm sure we'll talk about that next week. But yeah, that and then uh just all the comings and goings, a lot of awards, a lot of good stuff this week.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Yeah, we had one really awesome one. Um, one of our school resource officers was recognized as an officer of the year for one of the local VFW posts, and he was surprised, which I don't know if you knew this. I almost blew the surprise. I didn't know. So he walked in, and nowhere in the email does he.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I also didn't know that it was supposed to be this is a surprise.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

So in the future, if anyone is listening who plans to surprise someone within the department, maybe put in the email like that they don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Uh, but it's Officer Sid Wilcox. He walks into the room at the school.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

We did it, we it was almost like a friendly ambush.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Yes. He walks in, I guess. Thinking that he had a meeting or something. He walks in and I said hi. You know, he's going around saying hi to everyone. I'm like, hi, congratulations. And he didn't say anything, and no one said anything around me. But then all of a sudden, you know, one of the VFW guys is like, Oh, I'm sure you're wondering why we're all here. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, I almost blew the surprise. So thankfully he was still surprised. He was very surprised.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

That was a great ceremony. The VFW post, local VFW post. Um, they have a member that works at the school, and they have an officer of the year, and he nominated Sid, who's been since the beginning of our relaunch into the SRO program after the Stoneman Douglas um tragedy. Sid has been in the Calusa family. So he's really woven into the fabric of that school, and he does so much more than just stand guard, right? He's a mentor and a counselor and professional fist bump artist.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Oh my gosh. The kids love the fist bumps.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Booyah, booyah. That's what he says every time he does it, and it's so funny. But they love him. He fits he fits the part not only as someone to keep your kids safe, but also someone that is gonna love on your kids, your kids are gonna love back, and that's the whole point, right?

Building An Elite SRO Unit

SPEAKER_00 3:10

It was great. So to see pretty much a body of work for him, and um Sid is going to be retiring at the end of the school year, so it was a um double surprise, double emotion, double sad. Um, but really, really great. It's a nice bookend to a fantastic career of what an SRO should be. Where if you know Sid, he's what 6'4, 240, big guy, there is nothing that's gonna happen at that school from a safety standpoint, but he's not just a big mean looking guy, he's a big teddy bear for the kids who when you have a school community, there's kids that have all types of life things, and to have a steady rock that is more than just a sentinel or a guard, but a mentor and a friend and a um a role model, he is exactly what you want in the program. So it was really, really great yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

It was awesome. It's so interesting to when we talk about school resource officers, like it really takes such a unique, yeah, special individual to fill that role because, like you mentioned, you want them to be able to defend these kids in the worst case scenario and do it without thought. But then you also need like the warm, fuzzy, you know, almost teddy bear-like, as you mentioned, guy or girl who's going to not, you know, create a good relationship with these kids and have them not be afraid.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Right. It's a real duality of a job. And just to just to talk about that SRO program a little bit, it's we're in an award-winning SRO program. We belong to two different uh groups, the NASRO, another acronym, um National Association of School Resource Officers, and FASRO, the Florida Association of School Resource Officers. Our unit is is 30 plus. Um we have people who write articles for NASRO. We go to the conferences, we've been recognized as a unit, as as really a model for the country. So we the in in the past, going back before Stoneman Douglas, not not with us or not locally, we you know, our partners at the Sheriff's Office, Fort Myers, Sanibel, that are all in the Lee County School District SRO program, not us, but other places, SRO was kind of a on the way out before you retire. It was a cush job, if you will. And you look around at society now, it is not a cush job. When you have kindergartners that know what a lockdown drill is, that's not a cush job. So for us, when we got back into it after Stoneman Douglas and and developed a really overnight solid partnership with the school district and all of our charter schools, it's not just the public schools, but it's charter, city charter, and private charter. Um, we wanted that to be an elite unit. That is not a hide your problems unit, that is not an on the way out unit, that is an elite unit. So much so that we require the same firearms qualification standards as SWAT.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Um, we do training when when you're on spring break, the guys and gals in the unit are in a campus drilling. Uh the summer is when they get to take some time off because we don't really allow time off during the school year. We want continuity, we want the same people. So between taking some much deserved time off, they're training too, crisis intervention training, specifically tailored towards adolescence and youth and early education. Um, they're there for the students and staff as well. It's not just, or I'm sorry, the staff and teachers as well. It's not just the students, it's an entire community. Um, and we want them to, like I said before, weave into the fabric of the school. You are not just uh in case of emergency, break glass. You are mentoring, you are involved in after-school activities, you're a part of the school, and that's what we believe in. And you you have to do uh counseling sessions and organize classes with us. We do threat assessments when you have people who do uh maybe step over the line and and take a joke too far and do a uh a fake threat with real consequences, all the way up to and including legitimate threats where there's an imminent act of violence. We intervene and work with our detectives with the the county has a STET team, a school threat assessment team. We work hand in hand with them. It's a it is a a legitimate specialized unit, and we at the Cape Corps Police Department take it deadly serious. We are nationally recognized where that that was the commentary when we won our award was this is the model program.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

So I'm very proud of our SRO program. I'm very proud of our partnership with the Lee County School District and excited to keep that going. I am very proud of the relationship with the Cape Coral Municipal Charter School System and with our other charter school USA and other smaller independent charters that we provide SRO service for. Uh, it's one of the shining stars of the Cape Coral Police Department, and I'm really excited about it. And it was just a perfect way to talk about that with Sid being recognized because if he did a statue to represent what an SRO is, he would be the mold.

Counseling Sessions And Tough Calls

SPEAKER_02 8:34

For sure. For sure. Those kids love him. The staff loves him too. He really is ingrained in the school. I know um just in the conversations from yesterday or two days ago, whenever that was, they were all saying, like, Oh, I can't believe you're retiring. Like, what are we gonna do without you? We're gonna miss you so much. And yeah, it's gonna be tough. Because that person is also, at the end of the day, the person that, you know, handles if there's any type of crimes with the students or anything like that as well within the school. They handle any kind of um incidents related to that. So that person also has to be someone who is influential enough on those kids to compel them to not behave in those ways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

That's one of the things that I've seen lately because I've done some tag-alongs for a couple different days with some SROs, and I've seen it's not necessarily like, oh, we're jumping in because there's a crime. A lot of the times the uh school resource officers have a great relationship with the principals, assistant principals, the guidance counselors, and they ask these SROs to sit in on meetings with these kids who are having issues that aren't necessarily criminal, but they do need to be talked to. They need early intervention. And I think it's so helpful to have someone that they look up to, trust, they have is this um you know, idea of uh obeying the law and behaving and having that input in those meetings with those kids and a lot of times those parents, I think is really great at an early intervention thing at the very least.

Parenting Support After Trauma

SPEAKER_00 9:58

It's good like for coaching, if you're helping your son or daughter with a sport, there comes a point where you're still mom and dad. It's nice to have a different adult reinforce those messages. And when you go to school, you when you think an adult at school, you think teacher. And to have another responsible adult at school that is a different voice than a teacher, it's a great resource to have. So we do hundreds, literally hundreds of counseling sessions per year per school year. Um, it's just a wonderful addition to the school. And there are crimes, you know, where iPods get taken or jacket gets taken. Uh uh, you have a fight that goes beyond a you know, boys being boys or girls being girls, it gets into a criminal act, uh, vandalism at the school. Um, they they work those, but they also have to have nuance and common sense that a lot of these issues can be handled administratively, where you don't want to put a criminal record on a kid. You can and that's a that's a dun on the fly with with SMARTs working with the administration that this is something that they can do with a referral or an in-school suspension or an external suspension and avoid the criminal side. And then there are times when it's just there is no choice. Unavoidable. Right. And then you have mental health concerns where is it a Baker Act or is this a referral for counseling on the private side? There's a lot of nuance to it that that goes into that job, and we ask a lot of them uh and they deliver.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

You know, I do kind of feel like we should give a shout-out too to um SRO Cannon. Oh, we've had some really great information this week about something he did as well, and this might be news to you. It is.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Yeah. So um he he called and he's like, hey, I uh actually didn't think to run this by you. I guess um he along with his principal and um Gallisano was it Galasano Children's?

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Galasano and their like licensed mental health professional at the school.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

So they all work together to create a new program for parenting classes for parents who have kids who have been in traumatic situations on how to handle that, how to deal with it, coping mechanisms for them themselves. And I thought that was great because and that's not something that we would go and take pictures of and promote But it's worthy of recognition. It's amazing, it's amazing. You have you have not only a system in place in these classes now that they put together to help, but you have parents who are willing to take them and to to see maybe like different things that have happened in their kids' life and they want to help them and now they have the resources to do so.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Here's some inside baseball about the schools, too. When you think of a school, you may think that they're all cookie-cutter and they're all the same. Schools draw from different parts of the city and different parts of the county, and you have different socioeconomic challenges, you have um different home life situations. So sometimes one school, uh like Officer Cannon's school, can have vastly different challenges than another looks the same from the outside elementary school. And I can say without getting too personal, there that school that he has has a socioeconomic demographic that can present challenges. And for him, and I know the principal at that school, um, very heart-driven educator, for them to partner together and do that and address or meet an unmet need with those kinds of um demographic or socioeconomic challenges is phenomenal. So thank you for breaking that news.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Super cool. He was awesome. Super proud of him for that. And that's just another example of an SRO really going above and beyond their job description to not just check in door locks.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Right, no. It's really getting into the root cause of what could potentially be a problem. And a lot of times, especially at the younger level, it's the very first experience that a young person has with law enforcement and to set that tone and put them on a trajectory to have not only respect for, but understand that the police are are human beings too and they're to help. The the benefits are just uh infinite.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

For sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Well, I think that just about covers everything. I think we have some awesome SROs that we got to brag on today. There are so many more that we didn't even touch on just because we have 30 plus. But I'll tell you what, they're they're awesome with the kids. We stop by, they get nothing but rave reviews from parents because they're just as involved with the kids and teachers as they are with the parents most of the time. That it's it's just an awesome program for us.

Wrap Up And Next Week Tease

SPEAKER_00 14:36

And we don't have a lot of turnover in that unit because it is a sought-after desired position. Yeah. And within the unit, we don't have a lot of turnover or moving with schools. So you could start in kindergarten and have the same experience all the way through fifth grade, or if you're in middle school, sixth, seventh, and eighth, you have the same SRO. There's continuity, which is good for all sides.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Definitely. It's awesome. It's great. Is there anything else you want to add?

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Uh no, I I've got a tease. We got some good stuff coming next week. We got some great data analytics that we're gonna actually make more fun than what sounds like not fun.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

It's interesting stuff. It's really cool. Stuff about um how many calls we take and how many things we've responded to and all of that.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Um we're gonna bring numbers to life.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Exactly. So little teaser for next week.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Very good.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, stay safe.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Have a great weekend.