The Johnson City Police Department’s Handle with Care Intervention Program is going so well, that New York’s Broome County and cities within it have adopted the program, too.

In 2017, Johnson City Police Chief Brent Dodge was first approached by Johnson City Central School District then-Superintendent about a similar program implemented elsewhere in the country.

 “I’m like, ‘I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t think of it myself,’” Dodge admitted. “‘This is something we should have been doing a while ago.’ We immediately implemented it.”

Any time Johnson City officers interact with a school student, they contact the district and issue a Handle with Care notice. It doesn’t matter what the situation is: If kids are involved, the department notifies the school.

“This is a free and easy way to help positively impact the lives of the children we deal with,” Dodge said. “It’s absolutely something that law enforcement should be doing for the children they serve in this day and age.”

Picture this: It’s 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, and you’re a sixth grader at Johnson City Central School District who is sitting down to complete homework. Your parents begin fighting – again. This time, though, it’s different. The police are called, and your dad ends up being arrested and taken to jail. You don’t know what’s happening or what’s going to happen, and you get on the bus Wednesday morning confused and exhausted from racking your brain all night long trying to figure out situations your 11-year-old brain doesn’t comprehend yet. 

“Maybe that resulted in the kid not getting his homework done, or because he didn’t get any sleep that night, he’s now falling asleep in class,” Dodge said. “Instead of there being negative repercussions on the kid at school because of the traumatic experience, the school can cut the kid some slack.”

That compassion might look like sending the student to the nurse’s office for a nap or not penalizing the student for an incomplete assignment. There are many ways the school district can help, but only if administrators know about the situation.

“It also gives the school a chance to talk to the child and maybe send them to a counselor or something and just see if the kid wants to open up, wants to talk about the experience,” Dodge added. “I go directly to the superintendent because he knows his resources better than I do, and he’ll tell the teachers. Or if it’s something they want to tell the counselors or a psychologist about, or if the nurse needs to know, he can utilize those resources as well.”

Dodge said the department generally does not reveal any information that may compromise the student, instead focusing on the message that, for whatever reason, the young person should be handled with care.

“I’ll give a handle-with-care notice if we catch a kid shoplifting and they have to get brought back to the station and processed or something,” he said. “I’ll still send it even if the kid I’m dealing with is not the victim or offender because these situations are still is probably going to have some kind of emotional impact on the kid.”

When it’s a matter of public record, such as the death of a close family member, or if the child was involved in a car accident where someone was severely injured, the department will share more information.

“There are also some things where, if it’s for the health and wellness and safety of others at the school, we can give them more details,” Dodge explained. “Really, the school knows that the staff is free to ask questions or just say ‘Hey, we understand you experienced something last night. We don’t know any of the details and we’re not here to judge you, but if you want to talk about it, we’re here for you,’ and a lot of times kids will open up and share what’s going on.”

Dodge said that from his 43-man department, about two Handle with Care notifications are sent out weekly. With a population of about 15,000 in Johnson City and about 150 students per grade level, Dodge said the workload hasn’t been a massive undertaking for him and his staff. With the expansion countywide, however, other jurisdictions have had to find their own ways to manage the program.

“Every department does it a little bit differently,” Dodge said. “Here, I do it personally. We’re small enough that I can handle that detail, and I can ensure that it gets done, but the City of Binghamton, which is our neighbor, they’re a 150-man department. There’s no way their chief could keep up with the responsibility personally. He’d probably have to delegate it to someone else.”

With the expansion of the program countywide, school districts interacting with police departments across the county are now receiving notifications. Each department in the county handles its own calls, contacting individual school districts as needed.

“Just because they don’t go to our school doesn’t mean they don’t need our support,” Dodge said. Good rapport with the school districts is essential, as is officer support.

Expanding his own jurisdiction’s support was at first a big task for Dodge because he didn’t have the same rapport with leaders at other school districts. Now, Dodge said he has points of contact for all schools in the county. 

“That line of communication has to be there, and there has to be an education component so everybody understands exactly what we’re doing and what the benefit is,” Dodge said. “It’s not difficult at all,” he said. “You just have to be diligent with the officers to make sure it’s carried out because it’s not something they’re used to doing, so sometimes they’ll forget. Like any new initiative, you have to implement it over a period of time and make sure you stay on top of people, reminding them that they need to do it and that it took a while to become standard procedure here as well.”

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