Robstown ISD adds police department for security, law enforcement classes for students

New this year at the Robstown Independent School District is a police department to ensure school security and law enforcement classes for students.

"Our No. 1 duty is to make sure that the schools are safe," Robstown ISD Police Chief Filiberto Tagle said. "Any threat that comes onto the campuses, we already have an officer to take care of it."

Last fall, a state law went into effect requiring public school districts to add armed security officers during regular school hours at each district campus. For schools, this meant choosing between contracting with outside security or police personnel, arming existing school staff or investing in a school district police department.

"Our district just felt that the best person to be armed would be a police officer," Tagle said.

Last year, the Robstown school district worked with off-duty officers whose shifts at schools were a second job. This year, it has six officers working under Tagle. This includes an officer at each campus, as well as an officer who teaches law enforcement classes during part of the day.

Tagle, who spent more than 20 years as a police officer in Robstown, was the district's head of safety and security before the Robstown school board voted to begin the process of starting a police department last fall. The new department hired officers this summer.

The officers are stationed at schools, making sure campuses are secure, for example, by checking doors. The officers are also tasked with responding to any criminal situations on campus. In response to recent incidents at a middle school in Corpus Christi, as well as in Beeville, where young children died after being left in hot cars, the RISD officers also added sweeping through school parking lots to their list of duties.

The officers are not involved in school discipline, in part to ensure that students develop positive relationships with officers, as well as because the department's focus is safety and security.

"They're here for protection, they're here to keep the school safe and I don't ever want (students) worried to approach them about something," Tagle said.

Other area school districts, including Corpus Christi and Flour Bluff, also have school district police departments.

Law enforcement career pathway

A group of junior high students begins each day with a career and technical education class focused on criminal justice taught by officer Mario Cortinas. During the second period of the day, about two dozen high school students take a similar class.

Eventually, the district hopes that students who complete the law enforcement CTE pathway will be able to earn certifications in either dispatch or corrections. The district has begun talks with the Nueces County Sheriff's Office to tailor the school program so that students have job opportunities after graduation.

As the year has just begun, Cortinas is currently focused on teaching professionalism and job skills, with lessons on interviewing and proper work attire. As the year continues, future lessons will focus on self-defense, the mechanics of arrests, dispatching, communication and deescalation, and citizens' rights in the criminal justice system.

"There are some students that want to be engineers, some that want to be football players, but they still like the principles that the class teaches, such as honesty and perseverance," Cortinas said.

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This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Robstown ISD adds police department for security, law enforcement classes for students