Clay Community Schools forms own PD
Brazil Indiana December 26, 2022
The Clay Community School Corp. is establishing its own police department, and Josh Clarke was hired earlier this month as its police chief.
Clarke most recently was the chief deputy with the Clay County Sheriff’s Department.
Superintendent Jeff Fritz said the main reason for a district police department “is for the safety of our students and employees. In this day and age, school safety is our top priority and there are a lot of things going on across the nation and even in the surrounding areas.”
For several years, the district has been working with a company called LawMan Security and Consulting. The district has a contract with LawMan, which provides the school system with school resource officers.
“They are not our employees, so with our own police department, they would become school employees, providing more consistency with regard to the expectations we have, the hours they would serve, responsibilities and just personnel issues,” Fritz said. “This gives us more control over school safety.”
Clarke, who has already started his new duties, has been completing paperwork and certifications that must be sent to the state in order for the district to operate its own police department. “He’s hit the ground running,” Fritz said.
The district plans to work gradually to build its police department, Fritz said. He noted that Clarke has overseen the district’s LawMan program as far as scheduling.
Clarke said he was at a point in his career where he was able to retire from the sheriff’s department and was looking for another opportunity. Serving as the school district’s police chief “fell in perfect,” he said. “I’ve been actively involved with the schools and was the liaison with the SRO program.”
He’s also coached soccer and baseball and has children in the school system.
“I’ve enjoyed working with the staff and students in the past. I thought this would be a fitting role for me to bring my knowledge and experience from the sheriff’s office to start in the creation of a new police department,” Clarke said.
He’ll be building the new department from the ground up. He’s working on such things as policies and job descriptions and hopes to go before the school board next month to obtain approval to hire officers for the new department.
“It will be a stair-step program to where we build to a full force department,” he said.
While the district has budgeted for the new department, it also also hopes to obtain grants and federal funding to help fund it, officials said.
The intent is to have a police officer in every building, Clarke said. But their role will go beyond safety. “We want to be there as role models and interact with youth and just be engaged in the day to day school activities,” he said.
