Sheriff’S Detective Moving To Central Valley High CV First Valley School With Full-Time Detective

A sheriff’s detective is setting up shop at Central Valley High School. Starting this month, Detective Scott Szoke will move from the office he currently shares with Detective Mike Ricketts at SCOPE University.

The move is a way to have more law enforcement presence in the high school.

Sheriff Mark Sterk has said he wants to see deputies in county high schools.

Sheriff’s Capt. John Simmons said he believes that could happen at Spokane Valley schools this fall.

“We felt it was kind of a neat precursor to that,” Simmons said.

Central Valley is the first Valley school to have a detective assigned to the campus full time.

In February, Mead High School became the first high school in Washington to house a Sheriff’s Department substation with a detective.

Szoke’s move is separate from Central Valley SCOPE, but SCOPE volunteers say their goal is to have a station inside the high school.

“I think that would be a perfect marriage,” said Central Valley SCOPE co-chair and board member Deanna Hormann. “We’d love to be there.”

Central Valley SCOPE now operates part time out of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, across the street from the high school. However, Hormann said, the church has no room for an office where deputies or detectives can work. Now, they share space with day care and Sunday school classrooms.

Szoke, a 16-year law enforcement veteran and former DARE officer, will continue to handle his current caseload of burglaries and other crimes.

But he hopes his presence at the school will help prevent vehicle prowlings, a problem he sees mostly with juveniles.

“We’ve been hit pretty hard,” he said. “We’re targeting the juveniles.”

He also believes his experience working with schoolchildren will make the partnership work.

“Sometimes it can be pretty intimidating when walking into the school as a police officer,” he said.

But he said he wants to challenge next year’s senior class to an honor system.

“We’re going to hold kids responsible,” he said. “Other kids look up to them. We want them to step up to be future citizens.”

He also hopes he can branch the program out so kids can get involved in logging crime reports and working with SCOPE volunteers.

Central Valley School District safety officer Charlie Hollen believes the move will give the school district a greater working relationship with the Sheriff’s Department.

Two security officers work the entire district.

“There will be a greater presence,” he said. “Really, I can’t see anything bad that will come of it.”

Patsy Burger, whose son will be a senior next year at Central Valley, said while she applauds the effort, she doesn’t view detectives in the school as the answer.

“Really I don’t think it is a solution, because it is one of the last solutions,” she said.

Parents need to be involved in kids’ school activities. Many times that drops off after junior high, when embarrassed teens pressure their parents to stay away, she said.

“Parents need to say, `I will still be involved,”’ she said. “I think a good dose of parents on the scene would be a good answer.”

However, others like Jim Zacher, whose daughter will also be a senior next year, believe the move is a good idea.

Zacher’s son, who graduated a year ago, had a CD player and music CDs stolen out of his truck while it was parked in the high school’s parking lot. The case still hasn’t been solved, he said.

“Yeah, I’d love to see it,” he said. “Had they had someone professional in there, they could have had someone taking care of it.”

In addition, he said it will ease worries after the recent school shootings elsewhere.

Kids need to learn the ways of respecting each other, he said.

“Maybe an adult can lead the way. Maybe the detective can do it.”