School Resource Officers Train During Spring Break
Missoula's School Resource Officers underwent refresher training over spring break to hone their skills in dealing with incidents that might occur on high school campuses.
Safety and Security Officer for School District One, mark Puddy said his officers have learned not to hesitate to respond to any threat at their school.
"We've learned a lot over the past few years, and some of those hard lessons have come from actual case examples," said Puddy. "So, basically that policy is we will not hesitate, we will go directly to that threat. We won't set up a perimeter, we won't wait for backup, we won't wait for EMS units, we will respond directly to that threat."
Puddy said responding in a school setting may look different to a response to a possible street crime.
"We try to think about it a little differently, what's going to be that important intervention," he said. "Is it a mental health intervention, a medical intervention or a law enforcement intervention," he said. "We have a variety of different options including school counselors that are trained specifically to help us deal with those issues."
The school Resource Officers are Jeff Lloyd at Big Sky, Mark Monaco at Sentinel and Jim Johnson at Hellgate.