State Senator Mike Nozzolio and his Republican colleagues merit kudos galore for getting state funding restored for the New York State Police School Resource Officer (SRO) program. (“State to keep prisons open, troopers in schools,” The Citizen, April 3).

Over the past seven years, the nation's response to 9/11 has cost us a setback in the evolution of community-oriented, problem-solving strategies in public safety. Excellent strategies like the SRO program have been de-emphasized.

The opposition that former Gov. Spitzer stirred up with his ill-conceived proposal to do away with the SRO program is compelling evidence that the public has been sold on these strategies and insists upon them.

With their support for the state troopers' SRO program, Senator Nozzolio and his colleagues have shown themselves to be great champions of the children of New York and of those law enforcement executives who advocate progressive strategies for fighting crime in those places where it can do the most harm to the most vulnerable.

Terry O'Neill

Albany

O'Neill writes from The Constantine Institute