Our View: Police in the schools - for all the right reasons

Young people often feel an antipathy toward police officers.

And officers often don’t communicate well with young people.

It looks like Montana State University-Northern, Havre Public Schools and the Havre Police Department are working to solve that communications problems.

This coming school year, Detective Ryan Pearson will spend half of his time at Northern and half at Havre High School.

He will deal with problems as they pop up at both places, but a good share of his time will be spent communicating with students.

Police Chief Kirk Fitch and School Superintendent Andy Carlson hope having Pearson deal with students will break down the barriers between officers and young people.

In the past, Fitch said, students first encounter with officers was often when they came to arrest someone.

Pearson is a great choice for this position. He has earned the respect of many for his work as the community outreach officer especially for his work in organizing the highly successful National Night Out program at Northern.

He will continue in that position as well as working in the schools.

There is always concern when a program like this is launched that our schools will become a police state or that cops will be spying on students. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And this is not happening because schools are out of control and need police to restore order.

It is rather to make Pearson the eyes and ears of the police department in the youth community, and to develop communication between officers and police.

School officials often call police to respond to problems, and that will continue, but Pearson will often be right at hand so response time will be limited.

The program is a win-win for the schools and for the police.