Officer assigned to school
BY KATHY BARATTA Staff Writer

MANALAPAN - An officer from the Monmouth County Sheriff 's Office will not be placed on duty at Manalapan High School while the regular School Resource Officer (SRO) is on active military duty in Afghanistan.

However, the Manalapan Police Department has taken one of its two Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) officers and placed him on full-time duty at the high school.

Manalapan's regular SRO, Jonathan "Herc" Suydam, is a sworn member of the Manalapan Police Department. He is a member of the Reserve and was deployed to serve on active duty. Suydam has been the SRO at Manalapan for seven years.

Freehold Regional High School District Superintendent of Schools James Wasser has said an SRO is a muchneeded front-line asset for the school administration that is needed in all six of the district's high schools.

At present, Manalapan, Marlboro and Howell high schools have an SRO. Colts Neck, Freehold and Freehold Township high schools do not have an SRO. The FRHSD is now offering to reimburse each town $20,000 toward the cost of providing an SRO.

Two weeks ago the Manalapan Township Committee asked the Monmouth County Sheriff 's Office to consider the possibility of placing an officer at the high school to serve as the SRO in Suydam's absence. He is expected to return home at the end of 2008.

Monmouth County Sheriff Kimberly Guadagno told Greater Media Newspapers that although she was sympathetic to the issue, she could not commit any of her personnel to the position because "pulling a sheriff 's officer for the SRO assignment in Manalapan would result in less resources committed to the arrest of criminal fugitives or less protection for the public and courts at county buildings."

"The Monmouth County Sheriff 's Office can and does provide services to Manalapan on a regular basis through such county-wide services as our 911 communications center dispatch of fire and first aid to citizens of Manalapan; our K-9 bomb alert (dog) unit on an as-needed basis; and our field operations center" for events such as Manalapan Day, she said.

"We help and back up the Manalapan Police Department through any number of mutual aid activities. Sheriff 's officers are primarily assigned the mission of arresting fugitives who have committed crimes throughout the county and of providing security at county buildings like the court house," Guadagno said.

"As we explained to the school representatives and to the police department, SROs require very specific training and a full-time commitment. Their mission is very different than that of the sheriff 's office. Our sheriff 's officers would have to be retrained to provide a service that is not provided anywhere else in the state by any of the 20 other sheriff 's offices to my knowledge.

"In addition to the issue of training, we also have a concern that the request will, understandably, trigger other requests throughout the county by any number of its hundreds of schools. I do not see how the sheriff 's office could turn down those requests if we step in as Manalapan High School's SRO now. The Manalapan Police Department and the school indicated that they understand our concerns and that they are working on another solution," she said.

The Manalapan Police Department has two DARE officers, Kim Whitehill and Joe Felicia. They are responsible for providing the DARE curriculum in local elementary schools. At one point Whitehill and Felicia were splitting time at Manalapan High School in the absence of the regular SRO. Whitehill and Felicia are certified as SROs.

Brown said the decision was recently made to assign Felicia the full-time duty at the high school. Whitehill will continue with her DARE assignment in the elementary schools.

FRHSD spokeswoman Ilse Whisner said district administrators want to thank Brown for taking the initiative to assign Felicia to permanent duty at the high school in Suydam's absence.