Herbie Stubbs has been the School Resource Officer (SRO) at Northwood since 2006. He is a Northwood alum and an integral part of the Pittsboro community. Stubbs recently took time to share his feelings about his job, problems specific to Northwood and issues that schools across the nation face.
Q: Have you always wanted to become a police officer?
A: Yes. Ever since my senior year of high school, I guess as my last will or whatever the senior thing you do, I said I wanted to be a law enforcement officer and I applied for a scholarship. I had to write a paper and I got a scholarship, so I knew my senior year I wanted to be in law enforcement.
Q: What made you want to become a police officer?
A: I became a police officer because I wanted to help people, help the community. This job is not all about arresting and locking people up. It’s about helping folks in times of need.
Q: What do you enjoy most about your job?
A: I enjoy the students. Of course I am an alum of Northwood, class of 1990. At that time, I was labeled in the paper the “biggest hall roamer”
and I am still roaming the halls today. But I love the students; I love helping the students. I love to see the kids graduate and move on, and especially when they come back to different football games and different functions.
Q: How many hours are you here a day at school?
A: On a given day, normally from 7:30 [a.m.] to 3:30 [p.m.]. But with football games sometimes I get here around 7:15 [a.m.], and I’m maybe here till 10:30 [p.m.]. I can put in eight hours, I can put in 16 hours. It just depends on what’s going on.
Q: What, in your opinion, is the biggest legal prob- lem at Northwood right now?
A: Just like every school, you’re going to have your typi- cal marijuana folks, a little bit of alcohol. [I] haven’t had to deal with pills this year like I have in the past, but I know it’s here. Students think I’m oblivious, but I know what’s going on at school, who’s doing what. But the biggest thing I would say now would be just your typical marijuana users.
Q: Northwood does not seem to have a lot of gang-related violence, or really violence at
all. Is that right?
A: That’s correct. We do not have a gang problem at Northwood. We’re very fortunate here at Northwood not to have that problem like some of your inner city schools and we take a proactive stance on any type of gang activity, which we don’t have a lot of. [There is] pretty much zero percent gang activity at Northwood.
Q: What about the recent searches of cars in the parking lots? Has that increased from the past?
A: Bringing the K-9 [unit] to school is per the request of Dr. [Justin Bartho- lomew]. I do have input to recommend, but Dr. B requested that the K-9s come and look, and once the canine alerts on the vehicle, that gives us probable cause to search the vehicle immediately. We’re trying to take a proactive stance on it.
Q: Do you check all the cars or are there certain students that you go to?
A: No, you cannot go specifically to a student’s car. You have to pick a line of cars. Say I’m going to take the first row and the back row, and then maybe the next time we’ll do the second or third, so we alternate. Normally the principal says, “Hey, I want you to search this area.” And a dog is just like a human. You can’t run but so far, and a dog can only work so long because its lungs give out. So he’ll search two, three, maybe four rows of cars and then move on from there.
Q: What about the e-cigarette problem and the new cigarette store that’s popped up in Pittsboro?
A: Back to the earlier question, the biggest problem right now is going to be the e-cigarette. That’s a daily thing that we have here at Northwood: the e-cigarette. I think it must be easier to get the e-cigarettes; I’m not sure versus cigarettes, [but] a lot of it has to do with the fact that you can’t smell the e-cigarettes like you can [smell] regular tobacco products.
Q: So do some students smoke those in classrooms?
A: I’ve heard. I’ve caught several students with e-cigarettes in the bathrooms this year and on their possession, and I think we did have a couple in the classroom. And I think that’s done just out of spite, to be honest with you, just to see, “Hey, can I get away with doing this?” Because we had a student one year that actually smoked marijuana in a classroom—thought he was going to get away with it; the teacher didn’t know what it was, but we knew what it was.
Q: What do you think about the recent school shootings across the nation and school acts of violence?
A: It’s definitely tragic that we hear these sort of things across the United States. A lot of it does stem, in my opinion, from bullying. People feel like they cannot get help if they ask for help. They’re not given the right help, and they feel like the only means to get help is to take matters into their own hands. But if students in any grade level would come to somebody in the building, especially me, I will promise you that I will help take care of the bullying problem here at Northwood.
Q: How do you feel playing such a critical role, especially if something were to happen?
A: I feel I’m a very important part of Northwood; I feel like I’m almost a brick on the wall now, I’ve been here so long. I take my job seriously, and if anything were to happen, I would be the first to interact and do what I had to do.
-By Adrianne Cleven