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A Commentary from a Friend

By Joe Mariani, a retired Marin and Sonoma County teacher and administrator

re-posted from Facebook, with permission 

 

First of all, I love to read your Hal Collier stories.

But what sad news last night!

As a school administrator for SRCS [Santa Rosa City Schools] I regularly worked with the SRPD [Santa Rosa Police Department] & SO [Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office] and Probation. Several years before I retired in ’99 and then for the following decade when I was an on-call substitute administrator at all of the secondary schools in SRCS, we finally got 5 campus based PD officers who would split their time between our five high schools and their five feeder middle schools. As a building administrator I also attended the monthly Sonoma County gang- related meetings with the the same three groups at the SRPD main, where we would discuss the previous month’s gang activities & share intelligence.

Most regular citizens don’t have a clue about the dangerous and hard job that police & sheriff officers face every day, and how much we rely on them for our safety.

Also, it was always so great to see the paramedics & fire truck roll up – please no code 3! – when we had a badly injured or really sick student down. I go crazy when I see all if the bad press that today’s cops are getting, when I know from personal experience that all of the people who I worked with were good guys & ladies. And I also know that there is a “rest of the story” about the people who cops deal with every day/night that usually gets glossed over in the news. I dealt with middle & high school kids, non-students coming on campus, and adults for over 3 decades in a zillion “rest of the story” situations. It was so great to call or finally have a designated police officer to help with my 1056 [suicide/attempt], 415 [peace disturbance- can be a domestic or dog barking and everything in between], 242 [battery], H&W [Health and Welfare Code-known also as Welfare and Institutions Code-violation usually pertains to laws specifically to protect children’s welfare] , & even occasional 245 [assault with a deadly weapon], et al!

So my heart & prayers also go out to one more member of our “thin blue line, his Department, and his family.

By Thonie Hevron

Mysteries to keep you reading through the night.

Welcome to Thonie's world!

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