Wicomico County Sheriff's Office

School Resource Officers

The School Resource Unit has nine sworn deputies and twelve civilian crossing guards assigned to serve approximately 15,000 students and 3,000 employees in and on Wicomico County School grounds. Their primary responsibilities are to provide law enforcement service to all public schools within Wicomico County.

The purpose of the program is to provide a uniformed law enforcement deputy to each middle and high school to work in cooperation with the school's administrators, students, staff, parents, and community members to:

  1. Help maintain a safe and secure environment, which will be conducive to learning.
  2. Promote positive attitudes regarding the police role in society and to inform students of their rights and responsibilities as citizens.
  3. Establish a liaison with school personnel in a cooperative effort to prevent disruptive or violent behaviors.
  4. Promote close working relationships, good communications and mutual respect between law enforcement officers, students and faculty of schools.

We continue our commitment to provide training for the Board of Education personnel in the areas of drug awareness, juvenile problems, crime prevention and personal safety.

The SRO Unit works closely with the local, state and federal agencies to obtain more experience that is tailored for deputies in schools. The SRO’s are participating in exercises with allied agencies for room clearing and how to work with advanced technology. These classes are conducted during professional days, during the summer and on Holidays when schools are closed.

School Crossing Guards

Training and supervision of 12 school crossing guards continues to be the responsibility of the SRO Division. Crossing guards receive training on safe crossing techniques of pedestrians in a school crosswalk.

It is the Sheriff’s Office vision that the Board of Education will eventually secure operations of the crossing guards and manage them internally to relieve the additional obligation to the WCSO.

The WCSO understands economic restrictions have hampered the efforts of having two additional SRO’s to respond and patrol elementary schools and Pittsville Middle School. These economic times will also not allow for the staffing of a SRO at Pittsville Middle School.