The board plans to invite commissioner Kasari Govender to an open board meeting to hear a presentation from VicPD and the mobile youth service team
Personally, it seems stupid not to have a liaison in high schools. This is where teens establish "bad" patterns, and every single one they manage to save early is one less problem for decades in the future.
If an officer is present, the highschool student is more likely to be charged for offenses that happen at school, which means they are more likely to get a criminal record, which means they will have a harder time finding employment, which can ruin lives.
An idiot giving/selling drugs to their friends becomes a life-long criminal or homeless.
Dealing drugs in a school counts as an aggravating factor. Add a knife in the backpack, and you've got another aggravating factor.
You start seeing mandatory minimums of 2 years, which is fed time. That doesn't get removed from your records until at least 5 years after your sentence is over, so at least 7 years. This gets extended if you commit other crimes, which you might, if you can't get a job. That's into "ruining lives" territory, and we're created a lifer.
This isn't necessarily someone who "needs to turn their life around." This situation applies to someone who wanted to try ecstasy or shrooms with their friends and listen to EDM, or made a tray of pot brownies.
I am not pro 16 year-olds doing drugs, but lots of kids do drugs without ruining their lives. Most people try something other than booze before they hit 18. Having police in the schools to just hang around is more harm than good.