Long arm of the law reaches out to students

School resource officers (SROs), a fixture on a public school campus, are there utmost to ensure safety but it is getting to know the students through personal interaction that they find most rewarding.

Yuma Police Department Officer Alan Ienn, an SRO for six years at Centennial Middle School, not only keeps the peace but teaches 90 hours a semester as part of the federal grant that funds SROs at Yuma schools.

"Getting out in the class helps me build rapport," Ienn said. "The kids feel more comfortable coming to me. That builds trust."

And sometimes it prevents trouble before it breaks out, he said. Students claim Ienn is different from the beat patrol officer because they get to know him and alert him to a brewing storm before it breaks, he says.

"They say I'm a real person, because I teach with Mrs. Potes every day."

The class Ienn and Elaine Potes share as instructors is forensics science, taught quarterly as part of the Gowan Achievement Project, special classes for high-achieving students that is funded by the Gowan Company, a Yuma agriculture supplies firm.

Potes also teaches seventh- and eighth-grade science, but forensics helps build critical thinking skills for her students in the various sciences they must apply in their lab analysis such as chemistry, biology, physics and math.

"They learn from start to finish what officers must do at a crime by collecting evidence, packaging it, sending it to the lab for analysis and interpreting the results."

On Friday, students for the first time participated in a mock crime scene investigation in the Centennial cafeteria where they collected fingerprints, hair, fingernail, lipstick and DNA samples to form a hypothesis and write a crime report.

Students from the class will be chosen for a forensics club that they hope will be selected for a statewide scholastic forensics competition next May sponsored by the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services and Education. Only five schools in the state are selected, and Centennial has qualified the past three years and finished second last year.

Valerie Pena, 13, is a Centennial eighth-grader who participated last year. Valerie said it is a great opportunity working with Officer Ienn, and forensics helps her "think outside the box."

"The crime scene investigation last year was nerve-racking but once we got into it, it didn't seem so bad," Valerie said. "I prefer doing the lab work, doing fingerprinting. You get to know all the arches, swirls and loops on the fingerprint pattern. It's a lot of fun."

Just down the road at Cibola High School is the only female SRO, YPD Officer Leanne Worthen. She has been at Cibola only two years and said she was apprehensive about her assignment there because she didn't know what to expect among the 2,400 students.

"I wasn't expecting to be so warmly received," Worthen said. "But it appeals to me because I might influence or at least have a more positive effect on a kid's feeling toward the police somewhere down the road."

Worthen also gives presentations to freshmen health classes about personal safety or to senior government classes about the way the law differentiates between juveniles and adults when they turn 18.

It is those classes where Worthen truly gets to make a personal connection. She said the school is like a second family and in her two years there has only had to make a handful of arrests.

"The fact that I'm here helps kids understand there's consequences for bad behavior," Worthen said. "It takes a team to keep the school running as smooth as it does. I get support from the administration, teachers and students. I think it's good to have SROs here to keep us all safe."

Officer Ienn said he loves working with students and finds it rewarding when graduates return to tell him about their success at athletics or their military enlistment.

"So many kids come from broken homes and don't have a mentor, but that's where I can make a difference."

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William Roller can be reached at
wroller@yumasun.com or 539-6858.