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Read the following scenario, based on a real situation faced by an assistant principal:

You are an Assistant Principal at a suburban high school with approximately 2,000 students. The school is moderately well performing, with a staff that is well connected and a student population that comes largely from middle class families. More than 70% of your students go to tertiary education programs after graduation.

Your common disciplinary issues are attendance (a lot of tardies despite a school-wide tardy policy–and a lot of unexcused absences), academic dishonesty, cell phone policy violations, theft on campus (all those darn iPods on campus!), smoking cigarettes, and suspending kids for failing to attend Saturday School (on the third failure to attend). Every once in a while there is a student not only with alcohol, but drunk as well. You have had several students suspected of drugs, but the only ones that you typically can prove through searches are marijuana and prescription drugs (there is a high level of abuse of Adderall, Oxycontin, and Percocet in the community–both kids and adults).

One of the biggest issues is that the campus has an open-campus policy at lunch. Because the suburban environment is actually pretty small, there are plenty of places within 10 minutes of the school where students can go for lunch. Fifteen years ago the open-campus policy was instituted when the school was bursting at the seams and kids literally could not get to the lunch counter on time due to the out of control lines. Now it has become a tradition that is hard to counter, especially since many of the local businesses rely on the lunch rush.

But lunch is only 40 minutes–by the time the students are out of class, in their cars, out of the gridlock of the parking lot, they might have 30 minutes left. Consequently, the kids speed down the main streets around the school to get to the restaurants, get food, and get back on time.

Your principal and you have presented the negatives of the open-campus to your Parent Foundation, your Site Council, and your school Leadership Team. The open-campus leads to traffic tickets for the kids, traffic accidents, a lot of tardies (which then leads to Saturday schools impacted, etc.), as well as kids accessing things during the lunch time that they shouldn’t. Most of the kids who have been caught under the influence of alcohol or drugs on campus have been caught after lunch–they go home and they abuse at home since no one is there to stop them or see. Or even simpler, they drive a few blocks away from the campus where the dealers wait.

But even the teachers keep voting against closing the campus–partly because they like sending the kids to get them sandwiches too!

Added to the situation–you have no on-campus police presence, partly because the district has determined that the need is not sufficient to justify the cost. But the juvenile resource officer assigned to your campus is also affected by the police budget cuts since 2007, and he is assigned to 8 high schools and 10 middle schools in an area of about 30 square miles! This is more than 15,000 students for one juvenile resource officer! He is awesome and responsive, but he cannot possibly be everywhere all the time.

A few times you and he have done a very successful prevention campaign–where a whole squad of officers is waiting on the streets, in the parking lots of the eateries, and so forth. It deters kids from speeding for a few weeks, and that day itself led to tons of tickets, arrests and Saturday schools or suspensions for you. But quickly the same-old-same-old returns.

On this day, you get a call from the front office via your radio during the lunch period–you are out on the campus, walking around–trying to spread yourself all over for supervision since the lone campus supervisor is in the parking lot trying to keep non-students out and directing traffic.

The office radios you that the police have called and that they are on their way to the campus with a couple of students. Great. If Officer Justin (your direct contact) was the arresting officer, then he would just call you on your cell or text you en route with a heads up, so who know what this could be.

You head back to the office and turn the corner of the building just as you see the police officer walking in through the gates.  So you walk up to him and greet him – luckily you know him too.

“Officer Smith, how are you?”

“Hey there! Good! We got an interesting situation for you!”

“Yeah? Where are the kiddos?”

“Actually, my partner is en route with the students. He’s right behind me.”

Just then there’s the rumble of what sounds like a truck and you look to see a SWAT team vehicle pulling up.

“SWAT team?!?!?”

Officer Smith starts laughing. “Yup. Officer Justin is also on his way in from the scene.”

What the heck?

The SWAT team van pulls up, and an officer steps out in a regular uniform, followed by three boys and then a SWAT team officer.

They walk over to you and Officer Smith, and you say, “Follow me.” You go into your office and direct the students to enter the conference room. The officer in regular uniform goes in with them.

You and Officer Smith and the SWAT team guy walk into your tiny office. With the four of you in there, there isn’t even enough space for all of you to stand! The glamorous life!

“Ok,  what  is going on?”

Officer Smith begins telling the story. He and his partner were one of the squad cars working in tandem today with Officer Justin–parked on a side street and waiting for kids to speed by. They were quickly rewarded by a car speeding by, and lo and behold, three students were in the car with a driver who looks too young to have passengers.

So they pulled them over. Sure enough, the driver is still on his provisional license and was freaking out. The other two were quiet and looking worried, too. Officer Smith started wondering what else was in the car, so he asked the students to pop the trunk while his partner checked their IDs.  He walked around to the back of the car and started rooting around with his police stick between a bunch of blankets and such.

“You find a ton of drugs?” What would bring the SWAT team out, you wonder to yourself.

“Nope.”

Just then Officer Justin knocks on the door. You waive him in (your door, like every other door on the campus has a window in it to make sure there is always visibility behind closed doors). He has a huge bag with him.

“Good timing, Justin,” says Officer Smith. “Was about to tell her what we found.”

“Let’s show her instead.”

So when Officer Smith moved aside the one blanket that was in the back of the car, what he saw was:

 

He called the SWAT team immediately to help him through the situation, since he had no idea what else may be in the car.

The driver of the car is under arrest for possession of a weapon and driving passengers with a provisional license.