rattling) - When the school bus rolls up- - Good boy.

- [Steph] It's time to get to work for Brody, this chocolate English lab and sworn canine officer of the Bristol Police Department.

- Brody.

- Brody is not your usual police canine.

He doesn't sniff for drugs.

He's not going to take down a bad guy.

- Have a great day, guys.

- [Steph] He's a comfort and therapy dog who rarely leaves the side of his handler, Officer Keith Medeiros.

- Brody's typical workday is we wake up, we get ready for work, and we come to the schools.

We're here for drop off.

We're here for pickup.

We go into the schools.

We go into the classrooms.

But our main focus is just to make everybody have a better day.

Good morning.

Have a good day.

- [Steph] Medeiros has been a Bristol police officer for more than 20 years, but became a school resource officer in 2012.

In 2020, he pitched the idea of getting a therapy dog to his police chief.

Medeiros says Brody shines when students are having mental health crises, something that was even more important after the pandemic.

- We've had kids that were in crisis that could take 20, 30, 45 minutes, maybe even an hour, to get them back into a classroom.

For adults and for the supervisors and all the resources that they have to help this child, within five minutes of being with Brody, they're ready to go back into a classroom.

- [Steph] To say Brody is popular with students would be an understatement.

- Brody!

- Brody!

- [Steph] His Instagram page has more than 12,000 followers and he even has his own coloring book, which depicts him snoozing all the way through his live-streamed swearing in ceremony back in 2020.

And he's helped Officer Medeiros connect better with students.

- I noticed that in the high school kids that would not ever talk to a police officer or kids that would not ever talk to me, that I'd never had a dialogue with them, bringing Brody into that school all of a sudden I was having dialogue with the kids that I never interacted with.

- [Steph] Medeiros, who doesn't wear his police uniform to work, is part of the evolving role of school resource officers, commonly known as SROs.

- Over the past, you know, 10, 11 years that I've been an SRO, I've seen that we are more educated, we have more training.

- [Steph] Police officers in schools have been around in some capacity since the 1950s.

- [Reporter] Amid the gunshots and bomb blasts, hundreds of students ran for their lives, - [Steph] But they exploded in prevalence after the 1999 Columbine School shooting in Colorado with the federal government providing grants so more schools could have officers present.

Controversy has surrounded their use over the years, especially when it comes to student discipline.

- If a child's wearing a hat, if a child is walking the halls, it's not an SROs job to tell them to take their hat off or tell them to get back to class.

That's an administrative thing.

That's a school policy.

We only enforce laws that are broken.

We're not there to enforce policies that are broken with the school department.

- [Steph] The policing of schools is part of the concern for civil rights groups like the Black Lives Matter Rhode Island Political Action Committee.

- Teachers in areas that are particularly urban districts, and outside of urban districts as well, will use police officers as a crutch or a opportunity to have outside discipline.

So instead of dealing with the discipline inside of school, they will go to this police officer or this SRO who will then be able to handle the situation.

And, of course, that gets murky when it comes to what the role of an SRO is.

Is it the role of an SRO to keep the school safe?

Or is it to have students that having bad behavior go outside and enter criminal justice systems?

- [Steph] Harrison Tuttle is the group's executive director.

He says he works with urban youth, including the Providence Student Union, groups that are fighting to remove police officers from schools.

- We believe that no kid, no matter what they do, you know, barring it being a really serious offense, deserves to be met with a police officer with a gun.

We have incredible mental health professionals all throughout the state that are able to deescalate without a gun.

And so if we had SROs that were without a gun, we would be more supportive of that.

- So would you be okay with SROs being in schools if they were unarmed?

- Absolutely.

- School resource officers in Rhode Island are armed along with 99.9% of SROs nationwide, according to a US Department of Justice report released last month.

Should school resource officers be armed?

- Of course they should be armed because how are they going to neutralize a threat if they are not armed?

- [Steph] Lawrence Filippelli is the superintendent of the Lincoln Public Schools.

He's also on the Rhode Island School Safety Committee, which discusses how to protect schools from active shooters.

- If there is a true act of violence and someone is trying to gain access to that school and do harm to staff or students, having someone there who can respond in seconds rather than minutes saves lives.

- "Rhode Island PBS Weekly" asked superintendents across the state where they stand on having SROs in their districts.

About half of those who got back to us said they'd prefer to have more SROs, ideally one at each school.

There are roughly 65 SROs in Rhode Island and more than 300 public schools.

Would you like to have an SRO in every school here in Lincoln?

- Ideally that would be nice.

Having an SRO at every level really adds to the budget.

So if a community is going to get behind it, they have to get behind it with funding as well.

- [Steph] Recent polling shows support for SROs in Rhode Island.

A University of Rhode Island survey released in October asked Rhode Island adults about a variety of policy topics, including if they would support legislation to provide state funding for police officers in schools.

57% of those polled either strongly or somewhat approved, while 15% strongly or somewhat disapproved, and 22% were neutral.

- We're not opposed to a model in which police officers get called to schools whenever there's an issue.

We understand the difficulties that schools go through, whether it's person having a gun inside the school or someone that is a threat to others.

That is not what we're contending.

We're contending that the problem is is that we have police officers oftentimes being in higher numbers here in Rhode Island than we actually do social workers.

- The group's opposing SROs use the slogan, "Counselors, not cops," arguing mental health professionals are better equipped to deescalate situations.

So when they say "Counselors, not cops," you would say- - There's absolutely a need for more counselors and school psychologists.

No question about it.

There is an equal need for school resource officers, in my opinion.

- So counselors and cops?

- Yes.

- We're not there to arrest kids.

We're not there to lock people up, like some people think.

We're there to help them.

We would rather educate a child and let them know what the effects of drugs, alcohol, their actions, fighting, acting out.

We want to help them.

We don't wanna hurt them.

- Is there anything that you would change about how we use school resource officers here in Rhode Island?

- I think we need to be careful, right, because at the end of the day, they work for their respective police department, they are a sworn officer of the law, and they report to the chief of police.

So I think some caution is needed as to what they are involved in from an investigative point of view.

And I think school administration needs to know the line between there, right.

So I think school administrators also can't call a SRO in for every little thing, 'cause that's not their role.

Their role is to protect students and to investigate crimes and to be a support for the community - [Steph] In Bristol, Medeiros says he sees the impact of the work every day.

He still remembers Brody's first time truly working.

A child was in crisis and adults were trying to calm him down.

Medeiros asked a social worker if he could approach with Brody.

- This child had never eaten in the lunchroom before because he was very sensitive to sound.

So I asked, you know, on a whim, said I got nothing to lose, "Do you wanna go in the lunchroom and eat lunch with Brody?

You can walk him there."

And this child picked up his lunchbox, took Brody, we walked into the lunchroom, and it was the first time that he had ever eaten lunch in the lunchroom.

It was probably the highlight of my entire career.