WALKING A NEW BEAT; CAPE CENTRAL'S RESOURCE OFFICER HOPES NEW ROLE IS A SMOOTH ONE

When Kevin Eudy last walked the halls of Cape Girardeau Central High School, he was a student. Then, a columbine was a flower and Heath was the name of a candy bar.

Eudy says he's changed more than the school has in the years since he graduated in 1983. Now a corporal with the Cape Girardeau Police Department, Eudy wears a badge and hopes his tenure as a school resource officer is a bland one.

After seven years on the traffic beat, he's married with three children, and his family has helped shift his interest to interacting with young people.

As a school resource officer, Eudy will be at Central every day during school hours and attend all special events. He'll probably deal with the new state law prohibiting teen possession of tobacco, break up some fights and teach classes on saying "no" to drugs.

But he's still a cop. And the memory of the tragedies at Columbine and Heath high schools linger on the national consciousness.

On Dec. 1, 1997, a student shot and killed three students and wounded five others at Heath High School in Paducah, Ky. In April 1999, two students in Littleton, Colo., shot 13 people and themselves at Columbine High School.

"That's something my wife and I talked about," Eudy said. "There's risk in every part of this job. You just have to prepare yourself and everyone around you as best you can."

Ready for the worst

The vast majority of schools in the United States are safe places, with less than 1 percent of the murders of children and youth being school-related.

With the school year beginning, officers in Southeast Missouri have been trained in tactical exercises and hostage negotiations with students in mind.

Charleston, Mo., launched the school year with a police drill on what to do in case of a school shooting. Jackson, Mo., and Cape Girardeau have had similar training exercises in the past.

Cpl. Richard Schmidt is a hostage negotiator for Cape Girardeau police. He said the threat of school violence has affected how local police officers are trained for emergencies.

Historically, special response teams and hostage negotiators have found themselves working at cross-purposes, he said.

The primary mission of the armed tactical teams is to quickly get inside the critical area and stop the aggressor, sometimes with lethal force.

The hostage negotiator's job is to get in and slow the situation down to a crawl and help perpetrators, hopefully, develop a cooler head, Schmidt said.

After school shootings in recent years, officers realized that the aggressor is often a child. "That changes things," Schmidt said.

In Cape Girardeau this year the hostage negotiator and the special response teams trained together for the first time and worked on strategies for defusing dangerous situations.

As part of their preparation, police have aerial photographs of all the schools in the area, and officers walk through the schools as part of their orientation, familiarizing themselves with exits and places to hide.

"If there's a situation in room 203 in a particular building, we don't have to waste precious time trying to find it," Schmidt said.

The police department also has blueprints of all school buildings.

Gaining respect

Once a school resource officer himself, Cape Girardeau police Sgt. Barry Hovis now trains the new guys.

The police department looks for someone who will fit into a school setting, Hovis said. "Maybe in the past they thought it was a cushy job. Now I think it gets more respect," he said.

A school resource officer must be comfortable in front of a classroom and give lectures on drug awareness, conflict resolution and other topics.

The officers themselves attend seminars on defusing potentially violent situations and help train teachers to recognize the smell of marijuana and other signs of drug use.

St. Louis University Department of Public Safety officer Gary Gray conducts violence prevention seminars around the state.

Gray says parents need to remember the basics when it comes to keeping their children and teen-agers safe.

"If your child walks to school, get to know at least a few people along the route," Gray said. There should be houses they can run to if they feel threatened.

He said too many children and young people are forced into making decisions about their own safety, many without a strong foundation from home.

Parents should keep tabs on their children, know where they are and who they're with.

"Today's society allows all children to be free," Gray said. "Thank God for my mom keeping hold of me until I was grown."