Four Hamilton police officers to serve city schools in 2027 under new program

Hamilton police officers will return to schools in the city in September 2027 under a new program.

Police, along with the city’s four school boards, signed a memorandum of understanding Thursday, supporting a reimagined school resource officer program.

Officials say this new program will be very different from the previous program years ago.

In June 2020, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board voted to end its police liaison program following widespread protests and calls to remove police officers from schools.
The new school resource officer program will begin in fall 2027.

“The vision for this reimagined program emphasizes education, mentorship, prevention and positive relationships between young people and police,” said Dave Hansen, CEO of the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board.

“If you were to read into the MOU that we just signed, one of the things that we said was this program is not to replicate programs of the past, but to reimagine,” said Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, CEO of the HWDSB.

Representatives from Hamilton’s four school boards and Hamilton police signed the memorandum of understanding Thursday.

The move comes following new provincial guidelines introduced this year, where school boards and local police services must work together to create an engagement framework that will inform the subsequent implementation of school resource officer programs.

Details on how it will operate are limited for now.

“One of the things we didn’t want to do is predetermine all of those details before we engage in the community and students,” Robinson Petrazzini said.

Starting in December, they will launch a community engagement process to help inform the development and implementation locally.

“One of the important things for me as CEO of HWDSB is to really hear from communities who have very strong feelings. Who may have experienced harm in interactions with police and to centre their voices about how we move forward in a way that will build, rebuild trust,” says Robinson Petrazzini.

As for how they will navigate concerns from the community, Hamilton Police Service Chief Frank Bergen said the service has evolved.

“As the chief of police since 2021, I can tell you that where we are today and where we were is in a different spot,” Bergen said. “We heard loud and clear about the transparency and accountability of use of force, the transparency and accountability of the race, identity-based data that we produce and that we share willingly with the public. If we’re not willing to listen and to learn from those experiences, then we’re not doing our job.”

As of now, the program is expected to include four officers serving schools across all four boards.

“So right now, the four officers that come out of what is the actual math, if you will, to our grant application, we advise them how many schools we had, how many classrooms we had,” Bergen said. “And they came back and they told us that would be a grant for four officers.”

Community feedback surveys begin in December.

READ MORE: Police set to return to Hamilton schools under new deal: HWDSB