Life of a school resource officer: “We want the best of the best”

Story by Kate Carroll

Video story by Jessica Mastor

Photography by Kaitlyn Dang

Are more school resource officers the answer?

FOREST CITY, N.C. — Officer Leon Godlock took over lunch duty on a rainy Tuesday morning at Chase High School.

He stood in the atrium and talked to students as they walked by. 

“Wait a minute, ain’t today your birthday?” Godlock asked a girl who walked over with her lunch. 

Before she could get out a nod, he broke into a full performance — a dramatic rendition of “Happy Birthday,” while the birthday girl giggled with her friends. 

She thanked him and walked off with a smile. 

“I know her mom,” Godlock said. “She’s got a little sister and a little brother. I just know that from the community.”

Godlock is a long-time school resource officer (SRO) and community member from rural Rutherford County. He retired in April, but as a substitute officer, he had already covered three elementary schools that morning before arriving at Chase. 

“I started in the school resource officer division in 2004 for the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, and through that I was stationed at a high school R-S Central High School from ‘04 to ‘08,” he said. “And what I pride myself on during that time is there were like 1,100 students in the school — I probably could name 900 of them.” 

After starting as a SRO in 2004, Godlock progressed to becoming the Rutherford County SRO supervisor. He also joined the North Carolina School Resource Officer Association board, where he represented his region for the last six years. 

A recent Gallup poll found American parents’ concern about their children’s safety in schools to be at its highest level since 2001. The N.C.state legislature introduced a wave of funding for school safety measures, primarily through increasing the presence of SROs. 

The day-to-day

Today, Godlock was filling in for Chase’s resident SRO, Corp. Ryan Bailey, who had to leave midday to get recertified as a taser instructor. 

Chase High School is one of five high schools in Rutherford County. With just more than 600 students, the school has 24 percent minority enrollment and the student body is categorized as 100 percent economically disadvantaged, according to U.S. News & World Report. 

After checking in with the front office, Godlock couldn’t take more than a few steps without people stopping to say hello. One of the conversations came from a football coach who had Godlock as his SRO as a high school student years before. 

After about five more minutes, Bailey walked up and they greeted each other with warm smiles and fist bumps. 

Godlock —a bald retiree, but fit and over 6 feet tall — towered over Bailey, who — also bald, stood shorter with fewer years under his belt.  

The two couldn’t get through more than a few minutes of conversation without a student coming up to say hi, many of them greeting Bailey with a pat on his bald head. Bailey joked that kids touch his head when they walk by at least 100 times a day. 

“When I filled in for him last week, a kid came by and said, ‘oh, you’re not officer Bailey. I’m used to touching his head,’” Godlock said. “That’s that little inroad that he has with the kids.”

Another 45 minutes of talking with students and staff members in the atrium went by before Bailey and Godlock had the chance to move down the hall to monitor class changes. 

They ran into Margaret McKinney, Rutherford County Schools director of secondary education and former Chase High School assistant principal. Godlock asked how she felt about SROs. 

“They’re not your typical police officer,” McKinney said. “They actually engage in the school, in the activities within the school, they help foster the morale of the school.”

Three minutes until the bell would ring, Bailey and Godlock moved to the sides of the hallway. 

“Get ready for the stampede,” Bailey said. 

On the move

A sharp bell rang and the hallways flooded with teenagers. Kids began to swarm around Bailey and Godlock to say hello or give a high-five.

Students patted Bailey’s head as he talked about his school safety duties and how he makes sure the right doors are locked. Meanwhile, one teenager had taken off his fedora and placed it on Godlock’s head as they joked around. Godlock asked the student how his classes were going. 

“Ah, you know,” he said. “I like my teachers this year.” 

After plucking his fedora off Godlock’s head, he went off to class after another fist bump. 

“Are you coming to lunch?,” another student asked Bailey. “I want to play checkers again!” 

As the students floated off, the officers said their goodbyes. 

“If the teacher says you’re late, then let us know we’ll get you all a pass,” Godlock told them. 

Bailey headed off to lunch duty, which included checkers games and conversations with students. 

Godlock walked the halls and said hello to students. He could call out exactly where each of them sat for lunch and even when he didn’t know names, he knew faces. 

“Hey, where are your other two?” he joked to a boy eating lunch. 

“They are coming right now actually,” he said as two girls joined him with their styrofoam lunch trays.

Bailey dipped into the library to say hi to some students, who — on cue — patted his head and met him with more jokes and fist bumps. 

“What I had to learn to do the most is listen, rather than interject my own ideas or my own experiences,” Bailey said. “There’s some people that I can’t necessarily relate to, from personal experience, like I can’t give them a personal experience that fits their lifestyle or the way they grew up.”

For Bailey, just sitting and listening has led him to more than one conversation about high school relationship problems and friend group drama. 

“And I may be thinking in my head, ‘this is just something simple that they’re making a bigger deal out of.’ But to them, that is the most important thing going on in their world in their life right now and they want to tell somebody about it,” Bailey said. “That’s been the easiest way to relate to people that you don’t have things in common with.”

Soon after lunch, Bailey left to get his instructor recertification and passed off lunch duty to Godlock, who checked out the lunch options. 

“They’ve got french toast sticks,” said a student he called ‘butterfly’ for her long eyelash extensions. 

After she walked away, Godlock said the county had arrested multiple members of her family. 

“Well, there’s one young lady y’all already talked to; we’ve arrested everybody in her family,” Godlock said, referring to another student. “But she didn’t say anything negative about us. Because what we have to tell kids, ‘you’re not your parents.’ We don’t judge that student by their last name, by their environment.” 

Why are things so different in Rutherford County? 

Bailey and Godlock said in an ideal world, every N.C. school would have an assigned SRO — but making it happen isn’t so simple. 

“We want the best of the best,” Godlock said. “If the sound goes out that there’s a problem somewhere and somebody’s in this building trying to hurt somebody, I don’t want (the SRO) running away.” 

Bailey, who worked on the road as a general officer and an instructor, said the biggest disconnect between general policing and being an SRO comes down to people skills. 

“That’s one thing that no matter where they came from, no matter their age, no matter their race, male female, no matter what the officer,” Bailey said. “That was one thing that they always struggled with was talking to people.”

Godlock said the variance in attitudes and behavior, duties and training that comes with being an effective SRO, combined with general struggles across the state in recruiting new police officers also slows the push for expanding the presence of SROs in N.C. schools. 

In the meantime, as the state continues training and supporting heightened SRO presence through recent expansions to funding for School Safety Grants, it’s business as usual in Rutherford County Schools. 

“There are so many kids, this is their safe place,” Godlock said. “They know when they get here, they’re gonna get a smile. They’re gonna get a high five. Some officers do, some don’t. I’m walking out, ‘hey, how you doing? You OK today? How is stuff at home?’ I just love what I do.”