There is a new friendly face wandering around the Lincoln halls. He wears a badge and carries  a gun and has for the last 26 years. Officer Thomas Hall is the new School Resource Officer (SRO) for Lincoln, as well as 25 other schools in the area including private, academy and alternative schools.

The SRO is not to beconfused with the Campus Monitors, Stan Caples and Frank Acosta.

“Officer Halls is on assignment to work with the school district,” said Caples, “He enforces the law while we enforce the school policy.”

Hall grew up in Solana Beach, California and graduated from San Diego State University with a B.A. in economics. He moved to Hawaii and started his law enforcement training with the Maui Police Department and 10 years later, moved to Oregon to work for the Portland Police Bureau. Here he was assigned to work patrol and lasted 8 years until switching into the Detective Division.

”Most officers work about 5-10 years in patrol before working in a specialized unit such as the SRO,” said Hall. After 12 years of work in the Detective Division, he recently transferred to the Youth Services Division and became a SRO.

“I chose to work in the schools to reach students who may be on the wrong path to make better choices before they became adults,” Hall said.

Although Hall’s office is at Lincoln in 106, he finds himself always bouncing around to the different school because of the abundant amount of schools and relative lack of SRO’s. Because of this lack of manpower, Hall is forced to report to schools like Wilson High School because they currently do not have a SRO assigned to them, even though it’s nowhere close to his designated area.  

“I don’t have time to go to every school each week and have spent most of my time going to the schools that call the police to report a problem,” said Hall. “So far my time has been spread out evenly at the many different schools.”

Despite the shortage of SRO’s in Portland, when he isn’t working Hall  finds the time to surf, scuba dive, hike, and spend time with his wife and three daughters.