1.5 million dollar grant to fund six school resource officers in Greenville Co. Schools

Posted: Aug 15, 2023 / 05:21 PM EDT

Updated: Aug 16, 2023 / 08:32 AM EDT

GREENVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – Greenville City Council approved a grant that will provide six additional school resource officers to six Greenville County schools on Monday.

Currently, there are 12 resource officers permanently assigned in the Greenville County schools.

“Every day, Monday through Friday throughout the whole school year, so their jobs is to get to know the faculty and the students and to handle any issues that occur on the campus,” said Sergeant Johnathan Bragg with the Greenville Police Department.

Still, some campuses don’t have a permanent officer on hand.

“Right now what we do for coverage is we have overtime that officers come in every day during the week and they’ll rotate between schools,” Bragg said. “They have officers that come through the day and check the school and walk the school so it will be better when we have an officer permanently assigned to those schools.”

Now, six more of those jobs are on the way with the grant approved by city council for $1.5 million.

“That pays for salaries, equipment and vehicles, I believe,” Bragg said.

Bragg said the officers are there to be a permanent face in the halls, “to build relationships with the students, parents and faculty members there that way they all have the same face and they can have some kind of rapport if there is any incident or if something goes wrong they can have the officer to go to talk to some of our officers will mentor and talk to kids when it’s not criminal related.”

That extra layer of protection can help ease a worried mind.

“We get a lot of praise from parents at the schools where we have officers. They’re definitely glad to see them in there on a permanent basis. And they also get to know the officers just by seeing them every morning and afternoon at pick up and drop off,” Bragg said.

Bragg said that the end goal is to have a resource officer in every Greenville County school, and this new grant is inching close to achieving that.

The resource officers will be stationed at: