by Krystal Paco

Guam - School safety continues to be top priority. And island leaders met today to discuss the possibility of arming the school resource officer. The Judiciary of Guam may employ the nine SROs assigned to the island's five public high schools, but according to Safe and Drug Free Schools Project manager Joleen Respicio, it's not their decision whether or not to arm them.

"The SROS are probation officers and as you know the probation officers as well as the marshals at the judiciary are armed law enforcement officers, and so of course the position would be that in their role as a law enforcement officer they would be armed however our position of having them armed in the schools is completely left to Guam Education Board and the Guam Legislature," she said.

At today's school safety meeting held at committee chair on education Speaker Judi Won Pat's office, Acting Police Chief Maurice Sayama said arming the SRO wouldn't guarantee safer school campuses. "The liability of arming SROs in the schools that may have some deterrent but it's not the answer we would like to see," he said.

Sayama admits although the gun is part of the uniform, law enforcement officials avoid using it. "Taking a gun and pointing it at someone and taking a good shot requires a lot of training. A lot of mental maturity, it's something that we don't train officers. We don't train officers to shoot somebody we train them to avoid shooting people," he explained.

Instead, he said it'd be more effective to address the root of recent active shooter events. "I also commented on the common denominator in most of these cases whether it be at the schools, the theaters or at the shopping centers mental illness is the common denominator that drives a lot of the incidence," he said.

Guam Education Board member Dr. Jose Cruz says it's more critical we arm the students with knowledge, not the SROs with guns. "The students have got to be looked at asked how do we want to arm you? So arm the students because if you arm them with knowledge they can really prosper forever ," he said.

Part of the SRO's job to provide law education and outreaches to students to keep them out of the court system. What acting Department of Education superintendent Rob Malay says may be part of the reason disciplinary data is on the decline. He said, "What we have seen over the course of the last three schools years is that numbers at least for bullying assaults and vandalism are trending downward; there are other areas that are trending downward, too, but this is a direct result of a lot of the interventions that are put in place at the school."