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Vermillion County approves grants for resource officers

 VERMILLION COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) – Just a few weeks ago, South Vermillion schools were put on lockdown. While the incident ended peacefully, police say their thoughts are on what could’ve happened.

“We learned a lot out of that, but what became clear to us was what are we going to do, what can we do, to actually put officers inside the school,” said Sheriff Mike Phelps.

That’s what brought Phelps to Monday night’s county council meeting. Setting the scene for the incident in April, Phelps said they were able to respond to the school in about six minutes. However, he said if a school resource officer had been there, it would’ve helped a lot.

“It’s very clear that if we had a school resource officer on those grounds, things would’ve changed, the timing would’ve been much shorter,” he said.

Phelps said a school resource officer is more than just a police officer.

“A school resource officer is going to be doing all kinds of educational training and counseling, mentoring, things that we’re just not able to do right now,” he said, “This will also alleviate us pulling our people off of the road and the school officials being involved in something that the school resource officer is getting paid to take care of. Now everybody can go back to doing their jobs as they’re supposed to be. Schools need to be educating our children, not worrying about police related incidents.”

The sheriff’s office is looking at state and federal grants. Three in total, each grant would bring in one resource officer. At Monday night’s meeting, Phelps asked for the county’s help with funding for the grants. County Council President Michael Costello said the decision ultimately came down to one thing, you can’t put a price on safety.

“It’s a sign of our times, unfortunately, the schools used to be the really safe havens and now we have to keep them safe,” said Costello.

The sheriff’s office will have a quick turnaround in regards to applying for the grants though. Phelps said the two state grants are due next week. The federal grant is due in June.

As far as the county’s role, Costello said they will wait to hear back on grant qualifications and take on funding as needed.

“The funding issue will then be ours,” he said, “We’ve been very frugal in the past and we think we can find some money to fund a few of these things and with the child’s safety in mind, we’re going to do what we can do.”

No matter the amount of grants they receive out of the three, Phelps said it’s all part of the overall plan to keep every school safe.

“Even if we only get one for next year, we can build on that and we’ll keep pushing until we have a resource officer in every school,” he said.