Should police officers be in schools? Large US districts remove them amid protests
Sacramento CA June 7 2020
Should police officers continue to be in schools? Some major cities across the U.S. are grappling with that question.
Schools in several major cities have cut or are considered cutting school resource officer positions and ending their relationships with local police departments, local news outlets report.
A school resource officer is a law enforcement officer deployed by a police department or agency to collaborate with one or more schools, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers. They are not a security guard, and they are usually armed, the group said.
Many districts have added resource officers after shootings and violence in schools.
The national conversation surrounding police brutality and racism, however, has continued to grow. Thousands of people have protested and called for systematic change following the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on Floyd’s neck.
In Minnesota, Minneapolis Public Schools has “severed its decades-long relationship with the city’s police department,” the Star Tribune reported. The school board voted unanimously to end the school resource officers’ contract and instead find “a new plan for school safety,” according to the newspaper.
“I value people and education and life,” school board chairwoman Kim Ellison told the Star Tribune. “Now I’m convinced, based on the actions of the Minneapolis Police Department, that we don’t have the same values.”
A superintendent in Portland, Oregon, also said Thursday that the state’s largest school district will slash “the regular presence of school resource officers,” according to The Oregonian. The program provided for 11 armed police officers to patrol in the city’s high schools, the newspaper reported.
Portland Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero said the district hopes to increase spending on social workers, counselors and “culturally specific supports for students,” but the district did not pay for the police officers, according to The Oregonian.
People in Denver, Chicago and Phoenix have also called for eliminating the presence of police in schools.
Students in Phoenix are pressuring the Phoenix Union High School District’s governing board to ditch school resource officers, according to the Arizona Republic. A student who graduated from North High School this year started a petition to end its relationship with Phoenix police, the newspaper reported.
As of Friday afternoon, the petition had more than 2,500 signatures.
“Students of color, black students, are just more likely to get in trouble with the police on campus than white students,” Abia Khan who started the petition, told the Arizona Republic.
A school board member in Denver is also calling for the removal of school resource officers and replacing the officer with “restorative justice coordinators, mental health specialists and additional nurses,” CBS Denver reported.
“I would like for the Denver Police Department and Denver Public Schools to end their contract,” school board member Tay Anderson told the news outlet.
In Chicago, public school students are calling for the district to end its $33 million contract with the Chicago Police Department for school resource officers in Chicago Public Schools buildings, the Chicago Tribune reported.
“The city of Chicago should be investing that money … in our communities. They should be investing that money in after-school programs and mental health resources,” high school senior Diego Garcia told the Chicago Tribune. “We don’t need more cops. At the end of the day we are just being set up for the school-to-prison pipeline.”
