b"Did you have the power to arrest?Oh, yes. I had quite a few arrests. Once I had an arrest with a student and the parents refused to take him home. I had to fill out the papers and everything. Once the parents decided they were not going to take this kid home, you haveto find someplace to send the kid. They had this place in the Bronx, called Spofford, a juvenile detention. Id have to accompany the child along with a police officer from the precinct. All of this stuff is logged in your logbook. You gothrough the procedures and make sure that the kids are safe. It might be 1:30 at night, or maybe later, when I finally got home. You fill out your forms, you call your command center, you give the complaint number and all that stuff. Its a lot of paperwork. Then this child is going to family court downtown the next day. Id have to go to testify.What was this particular child arrested for?He was stabbing another kid with a pencil. You call your supervisor. There would have to be a police officer there.Then you arrest them. Sometimes somebody say, Oh he has marijuana on him. Then we call the principal and we do asearch. You don't do a search unless some supervisor or dean is there. You just can't search them by yourself. Sometimeyou might find a weapon, like a knife. That's an automatic arrest.Have you ever found a gun?No, never found a gun. But somebody had said one time that a student had a gun, but he didn't. But you have to gothrough a search if you hear anything; you have to follow through with it. You cant ignore it when a student tells you or ateacher who tells the dean or the principal. Thats when we get involved. What did you like best about your job?I liked the students. I liked just being there, the atmosphere. And, everybody was so nice. The teachers, the principal,the administration were all great. I felt appreciated. We have evaluations. Mine was always above average. It was encour-aging knowing I'm doing a good job.What was problematic for you? Arresting kids is what I liked least; this is somebody's child. That part, I didn't like. But its part of doing your job. Youhave to say: Okay, I have to do this.At the beginning of my career, as school safety office, it was much lighter. Our dutywas mostly being at the desk or patrolling. There were no problems. Once we had more students coming, things reallychanged. Kids were coming from other districts. Once the police department came, things got more involved. Those areproblems that you had to get used to. The high school had just started when I was there for my last year before I retired.What does it mean to you to be a union member?There are advantages. When I was working, we always had the union there, giving you information about your benefits and all that stuff. It was great. There was a shop steward we could go to if we had a problem, but I never had aproblem. Now that Im retired, I take advantage of the retiree programs.We have classes at the union that I love. I takeTai Chi, the salsa class. I like the theater class.171 "