Prior to Blake High shooting, Friedson requested permanent police officers in MCPS high schools
County Councilmember and executive candidate asks department, school leaders to develop plan
By
Ashlyn CampbellApril 30, 2026 11:50 a.m.
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Prior to a Wednesday shooting at Silver Spring’s James Hubert Blake High School, County Councilmember Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) asked Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) and county police to “develop a strategy” to permanently assign officers to every public high school.
“We have no greater responsibility than protecting our kids and our communities. By proactively leveraging resources instead of relying solely on a reactive response to school security issues, we can build on the existing coordination among law enforcement agencies,” Friedson, who is running for county executive in the June 23 Democratic primary, said in the Monday letter addressed to County Executive Marc Elrich, school board President Grace Rivera-Oven, MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor and county police Chief Marc Yamada.
Friedson and fellow Councilmembers Evan Glass and Will Jawando (both at-large), along with Silver Spring project manager Mithun Banerjee and Gaithersburg businessman Peter James, are seeking the Democratic nomination for county executive. Esther Wells, a certified public accountant from Montgomery Village, and Friendship Heights Attorney Shelly Skolnick are seeking the Republican nomination.
Friedson’s letter was sent two days before a shooting at Blake High, which left a juvenile hospitalized with a gunshot wound and 19-year-old in custody for reportedly bringing a firearm to the campus. According to police and the school, a Community Engagement Officer (CEO) was at the school at the time and was “flagged down due to a fight in the parking lot.” The shooting occurred during the fight, police said.
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Since the 2021-2022 school year, local police officers have been assigned to public high school clusters through the CEO program, which operates under a memorandum of understanding signed by MCPS, county police and other law enforcement agencies.
Under the CEO program, an officer is assigned to a high school cluster. Each officer checks in daily at their assigned high school, handle calls for assistance at other schools in the cluster and aren’t permanently stationed inside any school. The officers don’t patrol the hallways or get involved in school-based student discipline.
Friedson’s letter also followed several incidents at MCPS schools involving students bringing guns to schools, including the Feb. 9 shooting at Thomas S. Wootton High, and an April 21 meeting in which police officials told the council that the department did not have the staffing to provide a full-time police officer at each of the 211 MCPS schools.
“We can cover the high schools with [an officer] in every high school,” Assistant Police Chief Dave McBain told the council during the meeting. “When you look at our staffing situation, we can’t cover all the schools, we just can’t.”
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In a Thursday email to Bethesda Today, MCPS spokesperson Liliana Lopez said the district is “committed to a collaborative process” regarding Friedson’s request, noting the district “addressed the resource constraints identified by both MCPS” and the police department during the April 21 council session.
She said the county school board would “need to convene and provide formal recommendations to the [county] Executive and our police partners” and to “engage our police partners from the very beginning” to honor the district’s memorandum of understanding and its partnership with county law enforcement agencies.
The CEO program replaced the School Resource Officer (SRO) program that stationed county police officers full-time in public high schools. The SRO program was scrapped after criticism that it led to higher arrests among Black and Hispanic students and community calls for more emphasis on mental health resources than policing in schools. At the time, proponents countered that the SRO program led to stronger relationships between police officers and the school communities.
In his letter, Friedson said the CEO program led to “confusion and inconsistency” regarding the CEO expectations.
“A permanently assigned officer on-site allows for relationship-building with students as a community policing best practice to help prevent major incidents and ensures immediate response in the event when they occur,” Friedson said in his letter.
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In February, Marcus Jones, the former county police chief and current head of the MCPS safety and security office, told Bethesda Today that even though SRO officers were assigned to specific high schools, those officers also often had to tend to issues at middle and elementary schools, making the cluster model under the CEO program more similar to the SRO program than some may realize.
In addition to requesting a strategy to permanently place officers in all 25 MCPS high schools, Friedson asked for an additional officer to be dedicated to a high school “cluster to enhance public safety at middle and elementary schools.”
He also noted it was important to reinforce that officers are supposed to serve public safety needs and not be involved in school discipline.
Friedson is not the first to request a return to a model that more closely resembles the former SRO program.
Some elected officials, including Councilmember Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7), have expressed support for the return of the SRO program, while others, such as Councilmember Will Jawando (D-At-large), are against the return of SROs.
Friedson’s letter also requested that engagement and collaboration with stakeholders in the CEO program continue.
In a recent MCPS survey of families, staff and administrators, more than 30% of survey respondents expressed support for having officers in all schools daily – the highest percentage of respondents to options that ranged from having officers in school full time to keeping the existing CEO program. About 2,150 families, 156 school-based administrators and 686 school based staff responded to the survey.
Other respondents said they did not have an opinion on the issue, with 21.6% of families and 23.6% of staff members choosing the “do not know” option in response to the recommended options for the CEO program. About 10% of families, 2% of administrators and 5.5% of teachers responded that they want to have fewer police officers in schools.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine