SALYERSVILLE – Magoffin County Schools District now officially has its own police department.
As of September 1, the school system now has a fully-operational police department, with four officers, complete with vehicles and equipment. The officers have been sworn in and are employees of the school district.
Magoffin County Schools Superintendent Chris Meadows thanked the Magoffin County Sheriff Department and the Salyersville Police Department for their partnerships over the past several years.
Back in March, the school board decided they wanted to make the move away from contracts with other police departments to building their own police department with their own employees.
“We’re looking forward to this new department,” Meadows said.
He said they made sure to hire the right officers for the job.
“We have very qualified officers,” Meadows said. “Three of our officers are actually retired. One is a retired state trooper. One is retired DOT and the other officer is a retired city police. So, they bring a wealth of experience from their backgrounds. We do have an officer that’s not retired, but he’s around 14-15 years in the field. He also comes with lots of certifications with child abuse and neglect. We have lots of experience between the four currently and we’re very excited to have them on board.”
Meadows said it’s still the goal of the school board to have an officer per school, not just per campus as it stands currently.
“Having the four officers does meet the state law for having an officer per campus, and that state law says ‘given that you can find the personnel,’ and that has been the holdup for us for several months, finding eligible personnel,” Meadows said. “We’re very fortunate that we do have four now and can cover each campus, but the ultimate goal is to have a fifth officer.”
Meadows explained that the district has already purchased five vehicles for the police department, reiterating their goal to have an officer at each school.
He also explained that the SROs are available for after school and sports events, in addition to the full school day.
“Our police chief, Gary Lafferty, is there immediate supervisor and he coordinates with the schools to make sure those events are covered,” Meadows said.
Cat in the Hat
Meadows also hit on the “Cat in the Hat” social media trend.
“To educate our public and community, not all social media trends are good,” Meadows said.
“Some are enjoyable and I know some people jump on the bandwagons and have fun with those trends, but not all are good and not all are appropriate for our kids.”
Meadows explained that the nationwide trend involving the Dr. Seuss character from “Cat in the Hat” with AI generated images of a creepy and threatening nature.
“In some cases, in the video it may say something like ‘I’m coming for you,’” Meadows explained. “Or in some cases, students or people across the state and country can even edit that and include a school name, so it might have a school name. That can be taken as terroristic threatening. It’s being viewed by law enforcement as very serious, so I want to caution families to talk with their children and if they have access to social media – if they’re using TikTok, Snapchat, or any other social media platform, they really need to be monitoring what they’re doing because they could be charged with terroristic threatening if they’re sharing these, especially if they’re sharing it with a school name, a class name or a person’s name. It’s deemed very serious and we don’t want students to be uninformed and to make the wrong decision that come with some serious consequences.”
Meadows explained that the SROs are currently going around to the different schools to caution students from interacting with the trend.
