According to the Carmel Clay Schools website, there are currently 21 SROs in the Carmel Clay Schools district. All of the officers are certified by the National Association of School Resource Officers and they utilize the triad concept of school policing where they have three roles, those being law enforcement officer, counselor/mentor, and educator.
One of these 21 Student Resource Officers is Officer Rogowski, whom we interviewed. He’s a part of the Carmel Police Department which he joined in 2017. He graduated from Indiana University and was originally a teacher for roughly a decade in Martinsville, Indiana. In Martinsville, a very rural town, there are a lot of students coming from broken homes with over 50% of students on free school lunches and many often smoked cigarettes.
He applied to Carmel to be a police officer based on connections through someone in the Carmel Police Department. When he was applying, he was advised based on his polygraph and his background of being a teacher towards becoming an SRO. The Carmel SRO program is one of the top in the nation and he considers it a breath of fresh air working in this district with the students in and around the community, working at Carmel Fest and when school’s not in session. Based on this, he sees himself remaining at Carmel in the future. In his time at Carmel he believes his greatest achievement is his development of a vape diversion program where you’d get sent through an educational program for rehabilitation instead of punishment, wanting to aid the students with their education having experienced students with unhealthy habits, such as smoking. ‘
Additionally, his most high stakes situation was when there was an armed robbery at CVS. As the culprits were fleeing they crashed into a fire hydrant, claiming it to be, “something you see in the movies.”
These experiences show the great responsibility that comes with the job, and as he had mentioned, how he can’t just hang out with the kids. He has to keep them in check too, because he’s still a police officer, though a teacher at heart. He truly cares about the students and only wants the best for them whether he has to punish them or not, as there is nuance to the role of student resource officer.
