SOUTHWICK – The Southwick Police Department recently applied for a federal grant to hire a second school resource officer for the school district.

Southwick Police Chief Kevin Bishop said the Community Oriented Policing Service (COPS) grant is federally sponsored by the Department of Justice and if awarded, the department would only have to pay the new officer 25 percent of his salary for the first three years of his tenure. The town would pay the full salary past the first three years.

He said the deadline to apply for the grant is March 11, but there is no guarantee the department will be awarded the grant.

Bishop said it was a “no-brainer” to apply for the grant. “We’re always constantly looking for grant applications for the Southwick Police Department and we discovered one that could be used for the hiring of a school resource officers,” he said.

Bishop said that because they currently only have one school resource officer, the community only stands to benefit from hiring a second one. He said, “We only have one officer that is spread between the three schools, so if we could get another officer hired we could assign him to one of the other schools it would be an asset for the schools, the Southwick Police Department, and community as a whole.”

When it comes to hiring School Resource Officers, Bishop said the process is the same as hiring any other officer but there is a particular focus on their experience with children.

“We would be looking for a resource officer that understands juvenile crime, juvenile health and mental issues, and someone who is very open to the youth and could form a good relationship with the kids and schools,” he said.

When applying for a grant, he said that the department always has to go through the Select Board for taking any action. “We have to go before the Board of Selectmen and we have to get their permission before we even seek the grant and start the process.”

Bishop said the department is currently using five different grants, three of which are for Emergency 911 Services, a grant to allow people to bring in and recycle their prescription drugs at the department, and a federal bike and pedestrian safety grant.

He said that having another officer in the schools would be a tremendous benefit if there were ever an emergency situation in the school district. He said, “The Southwick school system is really a campus. It would be nice to have two officers right on that campus in case, God forbid, we had an active shooter situation so we’d already have two officers on the ground.”