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School Resource Officer:

For many years we had little knowledge of what was going on in our schools and had no connection to them.  There were problems of school violence that needed to be addressed and it was incumbent on law enforcement to provide some type of security, but not a security officer.

Providing a School Resource Officer in our schools to serve as a liaison with the school and school system has provided an answer to this problem.  Officer Jason Baiamonte works at the Pigeon Forge High School.  Officer Dennis Sutton works at Pigeon Forge Middle Schoo.  They are responsible for the protection of the children and employees at these two schools, teaching classes on various topics, making arrests for violations of the law, and assisting staff with disciplinary problems.  Officers work special events and provide a presence at the schools.  Before the School Resource Officer program was implemented in the schools, the department had little knowledge as to what was happening there.  Now we do.

D.A.R.E.

D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and was first presented by the Pigeon Forge Police Department in the Middle School in 1992.  Officer Dennis Sutton currently serves as our D.A.R.E. Officer.  The D.A.R.E. Program targets children before they are most likely to be confronted by their peers with an offer to use substances such as tobacco, alcohol, and other types of drugs.  Preventing adolescent drug use and eliminating the demand these drugs is the goal of the D.A.R.E. Program.  The objectives of the D.A.R.E. include:

Equipping students with the skills for recognizing and resisting social pressures to experiment with drugs

·         To help students understand and develop their self-esteem

·         To teach positive alternatives to drug use

·         To develop students’ skills in risk assessment and decision making

·         To build students’ interpersonal and communications skills

·         To teach students conflict resolution skills and avoiding violence

Juvenile Officer

The Pigeon Forge Police Department has assigned an officer to concentrate his efforts on juvenile crime and intervention.  Officer Bart Stinnett is the department’s Juvenile Officer, and is responsible for coordinating matters that arise involving juveniles.  Since the creation of this position, Officer Stinnett has had many opportunities to interact with our youth, and on many occasions has been in a position to help them make decisions that have helped to keep them out of trouble and prevented crimes.  Officer Stinnett has also been involved in assisting the schools with pre-planning for crisis situations, and has been instrumental in developing the schools’ Emergency Management Plans. We believe that by being more involved with our youth and schools, great rewards will come to our community in the very near future.