Days after attack on student, former Winnipeg police chief calls for more officers in schools

A few days after a registered sex offender was charged with assaulting a Winnipeg elementary school student, the city's former chief of police is adding his voice to those singing the praises of officers being stationed in schools.

Devon Clunis, whose resume includes a five-year stint as a school resource officer, spoke to CBC after a child was allegedly grabbed in a St. Vital elementary school bathroom by a stranger last Thursday.

Scott William George, 28, a registered sex offender has since been charged with assault, forcible confinement and two counts of failing to comply with a prohibition involving children after the incident at Darwin School.

The K-8 school is part of the Louis Riel School Division, which discontinued its school resource officer program in 2021. That fact did not appear to be lost on Premier Wab Kinew, who noted the suspect was ultimately apprehended after leaving the school and being followed to the nearby St. Vital Centre shopping mall.

“Ultimately it was a police officer and security who stopped this bad guy,” Kinew said Monday. “So school resource officers have a role.” 

George also made an unauthorized visit to Dakota Collegiate — another school in the Louis Riel division — in March before he was removed by police.

Clunis doesn’t know if having an SRO at Darwin School would have prevented the incident from taking place. But he’s spoken with numerous teachers and police officers across the country who share a common message: bring back SROs to schools.

“I think it's really important that we move forward in terms of getting police officers back into the schools, not to do law enforcement, but to build relationships with young people,” he said Tuesday.

After his time as Winnipeg’s top cop ended in 2016, Clunis was appointed the first inspector general of police for Ontario in 2020 and served in that position for 14 months.

However, he maintains that the most enjoyable time in his policing career came as an SRO.

“I realized what we're doing was really building into the future of not only these young people, but I say society as a whole,” Clunis said.

He believes SROs can play a role that teachers and parents cannot, but that role needs to be a layered approach with SROs just part of the approach to providing the best safety network possible for children in the province.

“We really have taken a very critical piece out of that social safety network for young people by saying we're taking SROs out of schools,” Clunis said.

As recently as 2020, Winnipeg police officers were employed at all six public school divisions in the city.