Editor’s Note: This article is part of the Police1 Innovation Report, which examines how emerging technologies are reshaping law enforcement operations and leadership decision-making. This series focuses on school safety in an era of expanded digital awareness, exploring how technology, governance and operational alignment intersect before a crisis unfolds.
They don’t just walk hallways.
They read them.
For school resource officers (SROs), presence inside a building means noticing who’s high-fiving between classes — and who suddenly isn’t. It means hearing the “rumblings” before they ever become posts, headlines or public pressure. And now, layered over all of that, it means watching alerts, notifications and social media signals that move faster than any radio transmission ever did.
Marietta Police Department (Georgia) Deputy Chief Tanya Twaddell has watched that shift unfold over nearly three decades in law enforcement.
“When I started 29 years ago, technology was very, very different than it is today,” she said.
Today, Twaddell oversees the investigative division and all special units at the Marietta Police Department — including six full-time SROs serving approximately 8,500 students across 13 Marietta City Schools campuses.
The issues facing schools haven’t necessarily grown, she said. But something else has.
“Our awareness of the precursors — we’re getting that earlier,” Twaddell explained.
And with that awareness comes a new burden for chiefs, commanders and supervisors: deciding what matters, what requires action and what simply requires context.
“It’s two-fold,” she said. “The information that you get that’s valid and useful — and then the other side of it is the misinformation that can spread very, very rapidly.”
That tension — between signal and noise — now defines how law enforcement leaders prepare for school safety before a crisis unfolds.
Actionable or awareness? Drawing the line before it matters
One of the central questions law enforcement leaders are wrestling with right now is simple: What actually counts as actionable information?
For Twaddell, that distinction begins with a foundational question: Is it a criminal violation — or a school policy violation?
“Those are two very different things,” she said.
If it’s criminal, law enforcement leads. If it’s a school policy issue, the school leads — and law enforcement’s involvement depends on the school’s needs at that time.
But defining action versus awareness has become more complicated in the era of real-time alerts and social media. Leaders now have access to more information — and they’re getting it earlier. At the same time, that information moves faster than ever, and not all of it is accurate.
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“Sometimes it’s just rumors,” Twaddell said. “Other times there may be a concern, but it gets expanded and taken out of context.”
That means leaders aren’t just responding to incidents. They’re responding to the way those incidents are being discussed — and often doing both at the same time.
As platforms evolve and students move from one app to the next, information can surface across multiple digital spaces at once. For agencies — particularly ones with limited staffing — that adds another layer of complexity to determining what requires attention and what does not.
The challenge isn’t simply identifying potential threats. It’s separating early warning from exaggeration — and doing so quickly enough to maintain credibility with both school partners and the public.
That clarity — about what rises to the level of police action and what does not — has to be settled before an incident unfolds. For command staff, that distinction defines not just response, but visibility and authority. Because once information starts moving publicly, hesitation can look like inaction, and overreaction can strain partnerships.
In the video below, three key steps for success as a school resource officer are broken down, focusing on trust-building with staff, meaningful engagement with students and maintaining strong law enforcement relationships.
Visibility and judgment: Where technology fits
Another pressure point shaping leadership expectations is visibility — specifically, how much access law enforcement should have into school-based systems and under what circumstances.
For Twaddell, that conversation does not begin with technology permissions or monitoring tools. It begins with partnership.
“We have an extremely strong partnership with our school system,” she said.
That partnership operates at multiple levels. It starts with the officers selected to serve as SROs, who are chosen specifically because of their ability to build relationships with staff, administrators and students. But it extends well beyond the school building.
Twaddell and department leadership maintain routine contact with the superintendent and other high-level administrators responsible for safety and daily operations.
“That way you’re having these conversations on all levels,” she said.
Those conversations include communicating expectations, identifying needs on both sides and developing coordinated strategies that work for the community.
“You have to communicate expectations and develop a strategy that works for both,” Twaddell said. “Every community is a little bit different. There really is no one-size-fits-all.”
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And that coordination is not built in a single meeting.
“There has to be consistent communication over time,” she emphasized.
That approach was tested recently when administrators became aware of “rumblings” on social media among high school students about organizing a protest tied to national immigration debates.
In an era when conversations can spread quickly online, the awareness surfaced early. The superintendent reached out directly and asked law enforcement leadership to be part of the conversation before the situation escalated.
The conversation began with school leadership and later included law enforcement, who helped frame the discussion around safety and expectations, ensuring students understood how different choices might affect both school operations and police response.
The goal was not to shut down the conversation, but to add context, Twaddell clarified.
Their conversation centered on practical questions — what a walkout during school hours would mean, what consequences might follow and whether there were other ways to support the community without disrupting school operations.
Ultimately, the students who met with the school and officers decided against holding a walkout during school hours. A separate, smaller group chose not to attend school that day. That group gathered during school hours and walked to the downtown square, staying on sidewalks and out of the roadways. The event concluded without incident.
For Twaddell, the outcome was less about whether the protest occurred and more about how it was handled. School administrators and law enforcement had already clarified their roles, the students were given context and expectations were understood before anything escalated.
The early awareness — including the online “rumblings” that first surfaced — gave leadership time to respond before the situation became reactive, something that would have been far more difficult a decade ago.
“Technology is an asset,” Twaddell said. “The systems do provide information, but that information is limited because it’s based upon what it’s programmed or built to identify or detect. It never replaces critical thinking and human judgment.”
Signals may surface quickly, she said, but they still require interpretation.
And that often comes from something far less technical.
“It’s amazing how much you can see just standing in a hallway,” Twaddell noted.
That presence — built over time through consistent visibility and relationships — shapes how information moves inside a school and often determines whether concerns are addressed early or only after they demand a response.
| RELATED: Building student trust in school resource officers is key to preventing school violence
Built before the bell
If technology is reshaping expectations in school safety, it is also reshaping what readiness demands from law enforcement leadership.
By the time something reaches command staff, there is often little tolerance for uncertainty.
For Twaddell, readiness at that level comes back to communication — and not the kind that starts when something goes wrong.
That preparation, she said, requires more than simply knowing who to call. Roles need to be defined ahead of time, including when law enforcement takes the lead and when a situation remains within school policy. Just as important, school leadership and police have to be aligned on who communicates what before those decisions are tested in real time.
“During an incident is not the time to be trying to figure out who is going to communicate what to where, and to when,” Twaddell said.
Those expectations aren’t set in a single meeting. They’re reinforced through exercises, coordinated planning and ongoing engagement between administrators and law enforcement leadership. They don’t prevent incidents, she said, but they do mean that when something happens, there’s less uncertainty about how it will be handled.
That work happens well before an alert appears on a screen. And when the next concern surfaces, the strength of the response will reflect the groundwork that was built long before the bell ever rang.
