With the start of the spring semester, the community welcomed two new School Resource Officers: Deputy Bryan Esqueda and Deputy Jonathan Jones. Even in their short time, the deputies have become familiar around campus. Esqueda was first introduced to McGuinness through sports while attending Sante Fe South High School.
“I graduated from Santa Fe South, so Bishop McGuinness was a school that I really couldn’t consider rivals, but I played soccer,” Esqueda said. “Every time we played Bishop McGuinness, they always had a good soccer team, and it was always a very competitive thing.”
Two years prior to accepting a position at the school, Esqueda took a job at Santa Fe South High School, working overnight from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. When the position at McGuinness opened up, Esqueda decided to apply, praying that God would make the right decision for him.
“I’m a very big believer,” Esqueda said. “If God has a plan for me, it’s gonna be for me. I applied for this job the first time I didn’t get it, but when the second time came around, that shot hit.”
Esqueda explained why he chose to become a School Resource Officer.
“I chose to be an SRO because to me, I believe in trying to be a role model to students like yourself or just kind of be that, ‘hey, I can go talk to this person and he can give me the best advice’, because I’ve been through a lot in my life,” Esqueda said. “I’ve made poor decisions. I’ve made bad decisions, but I’ve learned from them.”
Alongside an ability to be there for students, Jones mentioned how he sees the community as a part of his family.
Since becoming a police officer in 2013, Jones has worked at many schools, including the University of Central Oklahoma, Putnam City Schools and Oklahoma City Public Schools. Jones shared his mentality of being an SRO over the course of his career.
“He knows his community, he knows his teachers, he knows his students, he knows if something’s wrong, if something’s not right,” Jones said. “It’s more community-oriented policing. That’s the mentality of what I feel like we need to go back to as a society, as police officers know their community.”
Jones also mentioned the training he and Esqueda went through to become a resource for the students.
“Both me and Brian have been through crisis intervention training,” Jones said. “That’s 40 hours of mental health training that we have to do through the crisis intervention officer or mental health officer.”
Esqueda emphasized that patience is important for someone who wants to become an SRO.
“Patience is the No. 1 key because sometimes students don’t know how to express their feelings,” Esqueda said. “You’ve got to have a lot of patience. You’ve got to understand them, but you also have to have that reason to care.”
Jones added that attending college through the COPS program at OSU OKC benefited him in becoming an SRO.
“What I’ve learned during that program helped,” Jones said. “That’s one way that I feel like everybody should go through college to be a police officer, just because that education is going to help you in the long run. If you want to be a school resource officer, you can just apply.”
