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City May Use School Officers To Fill Police Force Shortage

Chief Catrina Thompson. Courtesy City of Winston-Salem

The city of Winston-Salem may shift its school resource officers back to the streets. The idea is to plug gaps in a police force plagued by vacancies.

The Winston-Salem Police Department currently has 28 employees assigned to local schools. Police Chief Catrina Thompson says she'd like to use those officers to fill vacant patrol and investigator positions.

The Winston-Salem Journal reports the shift would end city involvement in providing SROs, a policy that began almost 10 years ago.

Thompson proposed the idea at Monday's City Council meeting.

The change would cost Winston-Salem about $2.4 million dollars that the schools pay toward the officer's salaries. But the city would save about a million dollars currently being put toward police overtime costs.

The Forsyth County Sheriff's Office says it has had “preliminary conversations” with the city about providing school resource officers if needed.

Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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