NEWPORT, N.C. — School resource officers play an important part in keeping kids safe all across the state, and in Carteret County, for the first time, schools don't have to share SROs.

What You Need To Know

  • School resource officers are in charge of keeping kids safe in schools

  • Carteret County has an SRO for each of its 18 schools

  • Deputy Fred Meadows has been an SRO for over 20 years

  • He acts as an officer, coach and mentor for the kids at his school

Carteret County sheriff's Deputy Fred Meadows has been welcoming kids to school every morning for over 20 years.

“We just try to get them in the building as best we can,” Meadows said. “You see all those smiling faces and waves and it just makes it, it's just fun coming in to work and seeing all those smiles every day.”

He was the school resource officer for Croatan High School for 19 years, and now he's keeping kids safe at Bogue Sound Elementary School.

Deputy Fred Meadows checks the locks on the doors at Bogue Sound Elementary School. (Spectrum News 1/Jenna Rae Gaertner).

“It's kind of neat being here,” Meadows said. “A lot of the kids that I had at Croatan High School have children. And so I've got their kids now.”

Although having SROs isn't new, this is the first year that Carteret County has an SRO for every school.

“We can just make it that much safer for our kids so we don't have to be so stretched thin,” Meadows said.

Sheriff Asa Buck says if there's one place in the county that needs to be a safe space, it's the schools.

“The SRO positions have been important positions to have in place for many years, nowadays more especially with the acts of violence that we've seen play out across our country,” Buck said. “And there's no way of predicting any of these events from occurring. So that's why we've seen more law enforcement officers assigned to our schools over the past 10, 15, 20 years in response to that.”

Meadows is more than just a police officer to the kids. He has coached many different sports and acts as a mentor, as well.

“That's just another way to make those connections with those kids to see me as a police officer and a coach,” Meadows said. “And just building those relationships and having a hopefully positive outcome in their lives.”

Carteret County has a one-to-one ratio of SROs to schools. That means all 18 public schools in the county have a full-time SRO present and ready to respond.

Other counties across the state have varying numbers of SROs.

In New Hanover County, every school has at least one SRO, and high schools have two or three. In Pender County, two SROs are at each high school, one at each middle school, and a team of rotating deputies covers the elementary schools. In Wake County, 76 SROs cover the 198 schools in the county.