school resource officers

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has called on all school districts that currently have school resource officers (SROs) to re-evaluate their use in the schools and to revise the agreements they have with police departments that set out their job responsibilities. The call was prompted by incidents at Pawtucket’s Tolman High School last week, which reinforced many of the serious concerns the ACLU has long held regarding the routine presence of police officers in schools.

In a letter sent to Pawtucket school district superintendent Patti DiCenso on Tuesday and shared with school superintendents across the state, ACLU of RI Executive Director Steven Brown noted that school districts cede an “enormous amount of control” when they sign Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with police departments, and that this “unnecessarily set the stage for last week’s series of ill-fated events” in which an SRO’s attempt to handle a single student’s behavioral issue led to the injury and arrest of the student and his brother, the arrest of eight other individuals, and the pepper spraying of numerous youth.

Reviewing the MOU in effect in 2011 between the Pawtucket school district and the police department, the ACLU noted that it designates the SRO as the school’s “law enforcement unit” who reports to the police department, not the school principal. In fact, the MOU authorizes the SRO to remove a student from school without notifying school officials, and, if the SRO charges a student with a crime, requires the principal to support the officer’s decision in any legal proceedings.

The Pawtucket MOU further specifies that all SRO assignment and retention decisions are made at the complete discretion of the Chief of Police, not school officials. In addition, while the MOU recognizes the importance of selecting officers with demonstrated abilities and skills in working with students, officers are not required to receive any training on addressing behavioral issues or understanding the needs of students. The ACLU questioned how seriously those interests and skills are considered in light of the fact that the SRO at the center of last week’s incident had been investigated for a videotaped incident in which he pepper-sprayed and repeatedly hit a man with his baton just months before he was assigned to the high school.

In the letter to Supt. DiCenso, the ACLU’s Brown stated: “Despite the tremendous power that SROs wield in an educational environment, your school district’s MOU allows police officers to walk the halls of schools with little responsibility to school officials themselves. That is because, at bottom, they serve the police, not the school.”

The letter acknowledged that Pawtucket should not be singled out for such problems. A 2011 review by the ACLU of SRO use across the state found that many school departments had similar “one-sided” MOUs and that there were many incidents in which the presence of a police officer escalated a student’s minor infraction, such as wearing a hat in school, into an arrest for disorderly conduct.

“When a student’s immature behavior is addressed by a law enforcement official trained in criminality and arrest, not in getting to the root of a behavioral issue, neither the child nor the school is well served. In short, the presence of SROs redefines as criminal justice problems behavior issues that may be rooted in social, psychological or academic problems, for which involvement in the juvenile justice system is hardly the solution,” Brown stated in the letter.

The letter called on school districts to take responsibility for the police officers in their schools in order to prevent incidents similar to last week’s from happening again. In a series of recommendations, the ACLU urged Pawtucket and any other school departments that continue to use SROs to revise their MOUs to ensure school officials have a meaningful role in the selection of SROs and that, absent a real and immediate threat, school officials, not police, handle all disciplinary matters. The MOUs, the ACLU said, should also require SROs to receive annual training on issues such as restorative justice and adolescent development and psychology; establish clear limits on the use of force; and put in place simple procedures for students to raise concerns about the SRO.

Following delivery of the ACLU’s letter, a news article in the Valley Breeze indicated that Pawtucket school officials plan to review their agreement with the police department. The ACLU welcomes Pawtucket officials and officials from any other district re-evaluating their policies to contact its office for guidance.

[From an RI ACLU press release]

Recent controversy over which actual weapons were used at Sandy Hook, including MSNBC’s report as to whether an assault weapon was used at all, is likely to have no impact on the government response moving forward.

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Similarly, the fact that the government told us 9/11 was perpetrated by Saudi citizens trained in Afghanistan, that didn’t get in the way of an Iraqi invasion. As Gen. Colin Powell basically testified at the UN: Iraq basically deserved an invasion on their own merit. Stepping away from the causal link between Sandy Hook and forthcoming reactions, let us take a look at likely results:

The 18th Executive Order signed by President Obama is to provide incentives (and funding) for schools to have police oversee the children. This will create results. Of all the other items concerning background checks and manufacturing specifics for future guns, there is no clear indication that there will be any tangible differences. Gun violence will continue with the 300 million guns in America, and millions more throughout the world. Some people who legally bought guns and have no criminal record or mental health issues will lose their mind and commit a crime. Whether we consider this an acceptable number or not depends as much on the media frenzy as on actual statistics.

School police, known as “Resource Officers” (perhaps for easier digestion) have been key builders of the School to Prison Pipeline. The fistfights and the joint in the bathroom do not result in detention or suspension anymore: now they are imprisonment, expulsion, and an often insurmountable mountain to climb towards any “normal” adult lifestyle. A 2011 report by Justice Police Institute, Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police In Our Schools, would lead one to believe that the overall damage to a community is not justified by the vague possibility that the school is safer. In fact, there are indications that the police actually lead to increased violence in schools.

Fortunately, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Advancement Project, and others aremounting a campaign to let the President know what he is doing.

President Obama would like to spend $4 billion to put 150,000 more cops on the street, further transferring public safety from the traditional role of states to the federal government. These cops are not likely to be deployed in Newtown, Aurora, Littleton, Blacksburg, Red Lake, Killeen, San Ysidoro, or any locations similar to past massacres. Nor will they be deployed in such white collar businesses and institutions that have been the site of these tragedies. Instead, they will likely be patrolling the public housing areas of urban centers, looking for drugs among mostly Black and Latino boys. Just as in NYC, where an officer’s job is justified by how many Stops, Questions, and Frisks they conduct, any new officers will be under the same pressures to “produce.”

Prison Expenditures will Rise

Children have been the fastest growing segment in the industry of prisoners. They are a commodity justifying the building of a prison and hiring those who will guard them- even those who would try to teach them in these environments so non-conducive to learning. Industries do not deal well with stagnation or reduction. Thus, an ever growing number of children and young adults are needed to continue fueling an industry that has yet to be reduced in all the history of American prisons.

More cops requires more prosecutors to process the cases, along with more public defenders, judges, sheriffs, stenographers, interpreters, clerks, and everything else that happens after an arrest. All on the taxpayer dime at a time when most “American” corporations are multinational and manage to avoid taxes around the globe. These budgets are already bursting.

Putting police in our schools, and 150,000 police in low income communities of color, will certainly increase the front end of this industry during an era when states have been struggling to make reductions. Spurred by the Bush Administration’s Second Chance Act, a secondary industry of “Rehabilitation” has expanded to attempt a reduction of prisoners on the back end. One roadblock to this latter attempt is public perception, and media frenzy, (at times instigated by prison guards themselves) against “coddling criminals” or the perceived dangers of releasing someone who committed a violent crime decades ago.

The Future Economy

President Obama certainly knows that we currently have an economy of excess labor. Several decades after outsourcing and technology eliminated our manufacturing base, people in Obama’s shoes are tasked with the dilemma of what to do with tens of millions of unnecessary people in our economy. There is no indication that this trend will be reversed (not to say that it cannot be, but I have yet to hear any proposal that involves a massive new sector requiring human labor at Living Wages). In the short term, the Prison Solution provides a small consolation, albeit with considerable human cost.

Once labeled as “Criminal,” there can be no moral demand for living wage jobs, education, and affordable housing- at least not in our current culture, where those making such demands represent an increasingly vocal minority. Those who are labeled are often shut down with the phrase, “You should have thought about that before you became a criminal.” Yet we are labeling them before they are even old enough to drive a car, vote, serve in the military, or sign a valid contract. Furthermore, our society cannot even respond to similar demands by non-labeled people.

Non-labeled people from the lower classes can join the ranks of half-a-million prison guards, and twice that in the overall Prison industry. As the labeled are released from prison, they are expected to have lower expectations, to be happy with a GED and a job that pays $8 per hour. If we can create a nation where 10 million people are satisfied earning that pay, another 10 million are incarcerated, and another 10 million are watching over them… we may create some stability in our economy. It will require a relentless Drug War and a massive tolerance for racially imbalanced outcomes. Such a dystopia will likely require a repeal of the Civil Rights Act.

As a chess player it is important to think many moves ahead for yourself and your opponent. Naturally, a chess player expects their opponent to think several moves ahead, perhaps five or six, at least. Sometimes even if you think 20 moves ahead correctly, you still cannot see the victory; you may only see that all the pieces are dead except for the King… but you still must make a move.

This article originally appeared in Unprison.

Tag: school resource officers

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