CNP establishes police department

July 23, 2024 |

District to employ three school resource officers for 2024-25 year

By Ryan Horton
Choctaw Times

Choctaw-Nicoma Park Public Schools has officially launched a new police department.

The CNPS Police Department will have jurisdiction throughout the entire school district, which covers 60-square miles of eastern Oklahoma County, including areas of Choctaw, Harrah, Midwest City, Nicoma Park, Oklahoma City and unincorporated Oklahoma County.

“We’re excited about this. This is going to be good for our kids, patrons, and everybody. It’s going to be a really good addition to what we’re doing,” said Steve Keiffer, CNP director of safety and security.

Robert Bosse retired from the Choctaw Police Department in December, and he was hired as the chief of the new CNPS PD in January. He’s been working behind the scenes to get the new department established and credentialed.

The department is finalizing the process now, and will be live for the 2024-25 school year.

“All the stuff we do goes through different companies, but has to be sent to CLEET (Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training) in Ada for approval. We received our commission from them. Our manual is 541 pages,” said Keiffer.

“The last part of it is a thing called ODIS (Offender Data Information System), which is the communication system that allows us to communicate and share information with surrounding agencies. We’re 100% certified and ready to go. We’re just finishing up ODIS, and outfitting our trucks.”

Officials say this will improve safety and response times at CNP schools, and improve student-related investigations that occur within the jurisdiction of neighboring law enforcement agencies.

“It’s going to serve a lot of needs. We’ll have jurisdiction for our students no matter where they live in the district. Whereas before, if something happened at the high school Choctaw was limited on jurisdiction, because they couldn’t necessarily go into Nicoma Park, Midwest City, or Oklahoma City,” said CNP Superintendent David Reid.

“So, if it’s something that happened at their house, this will allow our officers to deal with that. It’s a cooperation between us and our municipalities. We’re not taking over any areas we’re just having SROs. We always wanted a minimum of three and were only able to get one from Choctaw and one from county. So, we couldn’t grow that, and having our own police department will allow us to have three and possibly grow that in the future was a necessity.”

The school district had previously paid the City of Choctaw and Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office to provide a total of two school resource officers to patrol the district’s school sites.

Now the district will have three resource officers and room for expansion.

“We have three SROs, Bosse who is our chief, and we have Seth Dear, who was at the high school already as the SRO, and also Martine Fox,” said Reid.

“We would like to get more officers. We had committed for three officers, and we had some startup costs in order to get commissioned and get the trucks outfitted. The future vision would be to add officers to the department. It would be great to one day have one officer for every school. The initial costs will be outweighed by the benefit. There are some recurring costs that we’ll take on, but the benefit far outweighs the cost. We’ll have three officers immediately with room to expand.”

Chief Bosse will work year-round, while his school resource officers will join him for the school year working a schedule similar to CNP’s educators.

“Our chief works a full year-round, while our two SROs work 10 days in addition to a teacher’s contract so they can do some additional training during the summer time. Our teachers work 173 days, and theirs is 183 so they have an extra 10 days to receive needed training during the summer,” explained Reid.

The officers were completing that annual training in recent weeks to be prepared for the upcoming school year.

The Choctaw-Nicoma Park School District has three pickup trucks currently being outfitted to serve as the first three vehicles of the newly established CNPS PD. The trucks will be used by CNPS PD Chief Robert Bosse, SRO Seth Dear and SRO Martine Fox.
(PHOTO BY RYAN HORTON – RENDERINGS PROVIDED)