The number of police officers stationed in schools has actually increased in current decades in response to a terrible wave of school shootings like those at Columbine High and Sandy Hook Elementary. But when authorities walk the halls, Black children are disproportionately detained, frequently for low-level offenses, adding to a cycle called the school-to-prison pipeline.
Now, some activists are hoping that the protests against cops brutality and racism roiling the country might be a turning point in efforts to dial back this sort of school security.
In Minneapolis, where protests exploded after an authorities officer killed regional resident George Floyd, the school board will be voting Tuesday night on a resolution to cut ties with the authorities department. Board member Josh Pauly informed HuffPost that he has actually currently heard from representatives in school districts in “Arizona, North Carolina, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, Oregon, New York, and Illinois” asking for support in crafting a comparable resolution.
After years of non-stop growth in the number of cops in schools, even in the middle of prominent occurrences of police cruelty against trainees, “this conversation feels unprecedented,” stated Jonathan Stith, nationwide director of the not-for-profit Alliance for Educational Justice, which promotes versus the existence of cops in schools.
Overall crime in schools has reduced over the last twenty years, matching larger societal trends, but the amount of security has skyrocketed. In 1997, just 10%of schools used police officers. By 2017, that number had increased to 58%.
Members of the Minneapolis Public Schools board announced the proposed resolution last Friday, 4 days after a white policeman pushed his knee versus Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, eliminating the 46- year-old Black male and stimulating a firestorm throughout the country.
The Minneapolis Police Department presently partners with the school district to location 11 officers in schools, costing the district over $1 million, according to Minnesota Public Radio School board members who already planned to vote no on renewal decided to take it a step even more, crafting a resolution that would remove officers from city schools.
” MPS can not align itself with MPD and claim to eliminate institutional bigotry. We can not partner with organizations that do not see the mankind in our students. We can not be neutral in scenarios of injustice,” Pauly informed HuffPost in an email. “Hopefully this can be a small action towards the remarkable modifications that are required in our city and beyond.”
In the past few years, serious discussions surrounding the impact of cops in schools have occurred after high-profile events of officers attacking children, like when a policeman was tape-recorded tearing down a trainee and dragging her at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina.
However this particular moment feels various, said Stith, whose company has been or