Times police called to Horry County SC schools in the hundreds. Here’s what we found

Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify the difference between School Resource Officers and School Security Officers. The security service provides armed guards at all schools and no policy on clear backpacks. (Updated 5:30 p.m. 6/1/2023).

There have been at least six incidents in six months at schools in Horry and Georgetown counties in which students have been arrested.

These incidents extend from high school all the way down to elementary.

The exact number of these school safety incidents in which an officer is involved is hard to nail down. Every agency – from the schools system, to law enforcement – has its own figures, and they don’t seem to match up.

Even harder is to receive information on the number of students who have been arrested or charged with a school-related crime.

Most law enforcement agencies don’t track that information, and unless that information was released to the public, which is what occurred with recent incidents, Horry County Schools requires a Freedom of Information Act request that will cost hundreds of dollars to fulfill.

But the one thing school officials and law enforcement can agree on is that school safety is not taken lightly. Both Horry and Georgetown county school systems operate under a zero tolerance, which means that everything counts – both the major and minor incidents.

“Every little fight between two 12-year-old girls is an assault because there is zero tolerance,” said Jason Lesley with the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office. “Everything’s a charge,” including incidents that at one time would have had school staff “call your daddy and he might give you a spankin’” for it.

School incidents are on the rise as student enrollment increases

With Horry County being the fastest growing county in South Carolina, the school system is seeing an increase in students. That means schools are also seeing a rise in school incidents, according to schools spokesperson Lisa Bourcier.

This year the district reported an enrollment of more than 47,000. That is nearly 2,000 more students than the previous school year enrollment of 45,496.

The student increase, as well as forecasted future growth, has the district building two new elementary schools in the Carolina Forest area with the plan of eventually replacing an additional two older elementary schools after that.

These new schools have the district changing and rethinking the way it protects students, taking safety into account in their design, Bourcier said.

The school system has either School Resource Officers or School Security Officers, depending on if the school is located within a municipality. Both are armed officers. SROs are law enforcement officers that are employed by a municipal police department and SSOs are officers that are employed by Allied Universal Security Company.

SSOs do not conduct criminal investigations.

In addition, there are metal detectors and wands in all schools and entry procedures. In addition, administrators use technology as a safety tool.

The schools have had metal detectors since 2010. Bourcier said there was a “pretty big investment” made in armed officers, wands and the detectors.

But even with all that protection, it still doesn’t put an end to situations that occur. Horry County Schools is “not unlike any other school system with discipline” issues, Bourcier said.

Bourcier said any crime committed, law enforcement will be brought in to investigate or make arrests when needed. There are things that the school can do and then there are things that law enforcement does, she said, adding the two will work together.

Number of times law enforcement called to schools differs

Horry County Schools is made up of 56 schools. There are more than 10 private schools in the county.

District-wide, law enforcement was contacted 262 times from Aug. 15 through May 1, according to Bourcier.

However, Horry County Police reported 1,484 calls for service to public schools (which includes public charter schools) from Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, according to spokesperson Mikalya Moskov. From Jan. 1, 2023, to April 26 there were 829 calls for service.

In 2022, there were 1,507 calls to all schools in the county. So far this year, there have been 844.

Calls for service are “instances at which a need was determined and an officer was called to the location,” Moskov said by text. Moskov said while she could not say for certain that such instances of assistance for traffic or athletic games wouldn’t be included in the numbers, it is unlikely as those situations are usually “predictable/anticipated.” Those situations would be “extra duty” assignments made in advance and not as a call for service, Moskov said.

“It’s a ‘we respond when called’ situation,” Moskov said by text. “School staff and students call dispatch just as anyone else would and, when asked and when related to a particular incident or threat, we establish a temporary enhanced presence.”

It is not clear how many of those police responses resulted in an arrest.

A FOIA request for the number of fights, assaults or incidents from 2021 through this school year at each Horry County high school that resulted in an arrest would have cost $429.50 for five staff hours at a rate of $85.90 per hour.

There have been several arrests of students since the beginning of the year that were released by the school system.

Those include a fight between five students in the cafeteria at Carolina Forest High School in February that led to students being arrested. A Forestbrook Middle School student was arrested in March for making a hoax call to law enforcement, telling officers that “the school was about to get shot up.” And this month, a Myrtle Beach Middle School student was arrested for bringing a BB gun to school.

Horry County Schools does keep track of student behavior through its annual Behavior Count.

According to the Behavior Count for 2021-2022, there were 55,891 reports of unruly behavior from students. In the last comparable year before COVID-19, there were 48,580 in 2018-2019. Both of those numbers include tardies.

Also, during that time, expulsions increased from 102 in 2018-2019 to 177 for 2021-2022.

The district’s policy regarding student behavior, which governs activities and their level of seriousness, ranges from low-level incidents such as lying, cheating and school tardy, to activities that result in violence to oneself or others, including threat to staff or students, bomb threat and vandalism.

Neighboring county’s officers report lower number of school incidents

Neighboring Georgetown County reported 188 incidents at its schools from 2021-2022 through this year.

School Resource Officers, who are Georgetown County Sheriff’s deputies, filed the incident reports at the 16 public schools from 2021-2022 through this school year, according to Lesley with the Georgetown County Sheriff’s Department.

Georgetown County has 16 School Resource Officers in schools, Lesley said. The exception is in Georgetown high and middle schools and Maryville Elementary School, which all have a city police officer because they are located in the city of Georgetown.

The number of student arrests were not immediately available, Lesley said.

However, the county has reported several arrests this year, including two separate incidents of students making threats at an elementary and middle school. One in February and the other in March.

School resource officers are present at schools

School Resource Officers are employed by a municipal police department.

The traditional agreement with partner law enforcement agencies is that the school system will reimburse the city 50% of each officer’s salary and benefits, Bourcier said.

The exception to this arrangement is for positions that are subsidized under state grant funding opportunities that are administered by the South Carolina Department of Public Safety. Several municipalities have leveraged this grant, including Conway, Loris, Aynor, Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach.

In addition, Horry Schools has a contract with Allied Universal Security Systems in Myrtle Beach for more than $2 million through the term ending June 30, 2025. The security company provides armed security guards within the school system.

A national report says not all incidents reported to law enforcement

Nationally, it is estimated that there are between 14,000 and 20,000 School Resource Officers in about 30% of the country’s schools, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers. However, there is no official count.

Those numbers began to grow after the deadly Columbine High School shooting in 1999, according to the association.

Seventy-seven percent of public schools reported that one or more incidents of crime had taken place, totaling 1.4 million incidents, during the 2019-20 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the primary statistical agency for the U.S. Department of Education.

According to the agency’s report, not all recorded incidents of crime were reported to sworn law enforcement. Only about 47% of schools reported one or more incidents to law enforcement, amounting to 482,400 incidents.

This story was originally published June 1, 2023 at 2:00 AM.

Terri Richardson

The Sun News