San Diego Unified School District Gets New Police Chief

This is KPBS Midday Edition I am Maureen Cavanaugh. San Diego unified have the new chief the district police force. Michael Marquez who served as interim chief for the district replaces chief Ruben Littlejohn who designed resigned in December. He is a 24 year lost enforcement veteran has been with the school district police force for 16 years.. Chief Marquez will come to the program. Let's start with some of the basics about the police force. Have any police officers are in this force and how are they distributed. Currently we have 43 sworn police officers. We have officers that are assigned to our patrol division that you see driving around in the black and white police cars that we also have a compliment of campus police officers that are assigned to our customers. House and determine which schools will get the officers. We actually have one campus officer assigned to each high school in the cluster. In addition to that we also have a compliment of community service officers that are assigned to some of our elementary schools in the district. You have worked in the National City Police Department as I said and at the school district. What are some of the differences between those types of the lease for. Working for the National City Police Department was a wonderful looks. For me. It is municipal police were. However working for the school district's department is a specialized law enforcement work for we are working with children day in and day out. What are the differences in your approach and your training on how that police work is actually accomplished. I speak for the work that we are currently doing out at the district Police Department. Looking at things a little bit differently. We are being more -- would look at things more historically and we look at diversion we understand that incarcerating our children will result in your children graduating from our schools and that is something that we are trying to get in front of. We're trying to disrupt the school to prison pipeline. To your officers get special kinds of training as how to interact with kids in school We do we actually send all of our police officers to a police officer course that is both mandated in the state of California. The San Diego unified the district is having money troubles again. We have talked about that a number of times. We are working to cover a budget short. Is affecting the Police Department. The superintendent and the Board of Education had to make some really tough decisions as you have already highlighted having to come up with $124 million solutions is not easy.. Certainly it impacts our district. . We are not losing any police officer jobs at the end of the fiscal year. Do you already have a plan in place. We are currently working with the team here in our department and with the district to continue to provide the appropriate resources and tools. Let's look at what they have faced and have taste.. That I thought that, militarization sent the wrong message about the lease. I certainly understand the concern for not only the community. Our opinion it was a rescue vehicle and was intended to help in the most critical situations that we could counter in our schools. Last year there was a fight for a police officer fired a Taser gun at the student.. In my vision for this organization and for our officers to try to handle all situations at the lowest level possible looking at things and being proactive in looking at the restorative practices and restorative conferencing as options interacting with children. Is He said that a couple of times the restorative justice them in different schools the idea is for students to break the rules to have a face-to-face meeting with their victims with the help of a mediator. What is the role of police officers? With me take part in the mediation to occur on our campuses it is a wonderful experience for you get to bring in the victims of crimes and also the people that are responsible for the rendering and having some really great conversation about how people feel about the harm that was done. And police officers are a part of that process. Please officers across the state have to begin marking the arrest and traffic stops. To the school please do anything like that.. We have a way to check all of our statistics and we do monitor that is something that we take very seriously and we are concerned about the work we do in the departments of we have an opportunity to review those types of statistics. Do you review it. Is there a formal process where you review the numbers? We have a formal process in place at the San Diego unified school district Police Department where we reviewed statistics on a regular basis and have our own analysis to assist us with that. I have been speaking with the new police chief Michael Marquez. You very much for your time.