Police Officers in Schools Framework Programme in Spain

Police Officers in Schools is a programme that belongs to the Local Police, in collaboration with other municipal services, which focuses its actions in the  field of preventions and protection of minors, and which with different names has been taking place in several Spanish municipalities for ten years.

However, from the year 2012, through collaboration agreements between the Delegation for the National Plan on Drugs and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, the relaunch programme began in order to achieve two key objectives: the elaboration of a Protocol Framework Programme, with the focus of its dissemination and extension throughout the national territory, and to carry out specific training actions adapted to this Protocol for the officers that perform this service.

The Protocol Framework Programme focuses on the actions that have arisen from situations of concern related to the school environment, such as drug prevention, truancy or peer violence. It also focuses on problems detected in the open environment, such as consumption in public areas or sale of alcohol and tobacco to minors in public venues and establishments. Finally, it takes into account other incidents that occur in the field of information and communications technology.

In addition, the Protocol has a dual function: to be a useful guide for the implementation and starting up of the Police Officers in Schools Programme and to be empowered to adapt to the different local concerns that may be prevalent.
As was recalled in the conference opening by the General Secretary of the FEMP, in 2012 an investigation began focused on the study of the dissemination of the programme in the national territory, the analysis of the ways of implementing the programme and a comparison of all their own documentation conceded by the nine municipalities and the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands participating.
Thanks to this work, in 2013 a specific training module adapted to the Protocol Framework was developed, which was followed by three editions in 2014 and two more in 2015, in addition to enabling the definition of the steps to follow towards the adhesion of the Police Officers in Schools Programme.