Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily News is doing a series of features on some of the new and returning School Resource Officers (SRO) to let people get to know them as the new school year kicks off. Our next story features Long Cane Middle School SRO Phillip Johnson.

Unlike most of the School Resource Officers interviewed in this series, TCSO Deputy Phillip Johnson is a veteran SRO.

Johnson has been with the Troup County Sheriff’s Office for 20 years and has 13-plus years as an SRO, having spent some of his time in the TCSO narcotics unit.

He said he had been at Long Cane serving both the middle and elementary schools.

“When they first started having SROs years ago, I did about a four or five-year stint, and then when they cut it — the school system cut it out for several years — I went and worked in the drug unit,” Johnson said. “I did that for four or five years and then the school system decided to put the resource officers back in middle schools. So that’s when I asked the sheriff that I wanted to come on back down here if I could.”

Johnson enjoys being an SRO and connecting with the students.

“Some of them are a lot easier. There’s a bunch of them I wish I could take home with me,” Johnson said. “But then some of them, the ones that get in trouble, those are harder when I have to go deal with them in a stern way.”

Johnson said even those kids usually come around once they learn that he’s there to help and not to take them to jail.

“Our first encounter may not be all that great, but after the fact, there’s a mutual respect,” he said.

“A bunch of them I won’t even get to know unless they get in trouble. We’ve probably got a low 1100 this year. There will be 950 kids that I probably won’t even know their name, because they’re good and stay out of trouble,” Johnson said.

He still makes an effort to connect with kids who aren’t frequently in the principal’s office, especially ones who catch his eye and appear to be in need.

One of the ways he tries to connect is by helping students prepare for their driver’s tests. 

“I try to get these books that you get when you go take your driver’s test, because when they get in eighth grade, they get into that age to where they’ve got to have their grades up. They got to have their attendance up,” Johnson said. “I try to go in there and get [Principal] Glisson to let me sit in and have a little class with them. And we go over that driver’s book. I try to teach them to give them a heads up on this little test they’re going to take. If you want to operate a motor vehicle on the highway, it ain’t easy.”

Johnson said his primary role is making sure everyone at the school is safe but he also helps out as much as he can with things administrative staff asks of him.

He said he and Deputy Hockett, who serves as SRO for the nearby Long Cane Elementary School, work together to help direct traffic in the mornings and afternoons. But most of his day is walking the halls or monitoring common areas.

“I’m trying to be visible when the classes change,” Johnson said. “But sometimes I’m called for an administrative type call for maybe a kid acting up in class.”

Johnson said unfortunately part of his job is sometimes protecting staff from parents.

“We have parents now that get bent out of shape,” Johnson said. “They’ll come in and verbally get a little sideways with our administrators. Some will get so mad they’ll come up here and demand to speak to a teacher. I have to tell them it doesn’t work that way. You don’t come in here and demand stuff. You need to calm down before you come in here.”

“That only happens every now and then,” he said.

Johnson said for the most part he tries to stay out of discipline issues unless they are serious.

“You don’t want to be seen going to every call from a kid that may act up in class,” Johnson said.  “Because when they do call me for something that’s going to be serious, students need to be able to distinguish between the two. When you see me, it’s time to act right.”