MEMORANDUM

The use of school-based police is not entirely new, though the regular use of law enforcement in schools has become increasingly common in the last 15 years. In the late 90s and early 2000s, as fears about youth and school violence took hold, many schools rushed to hire permanent police (usually called School Resource Officers or SROs) often without a well-developed understanding of their role. While less than 10,000 police were stationed in schools in 1997, that number had expanded to 17,000 by 2010.1 In 2007, almost 70 percent of public school students polled nationwide reported that police officers or security guards patrolled their hallways.2 While the rationale for having police in schools is to address the threat of serious and deadly violence, in fact virtually all school policing programs are significantly broader in scope and herein lies a fundamental flaw with the practice. Numerous studies and anecdotal information show that a significant portion of police activity actually deals with garden variety student misconduct, including many behaviors that do not seriously threaten school safety. Students are being ticketed and even arrested for behaviors that were historically handled by educators as discipline issues including everything from minor fights to drawing on desks to temper tantrums.3 A 2012 report from Massachusetts, for instance, recounts the following incident: On October 23, 2007, a 14-year-old boy at the Kennedy Middle School in Springfield, Massachusetts, was arrested after he refused to walk with a teacher to her office and instead returned to his classroom. According to the police report, he yelled at the teacher, bounced a basketball in a school hallway, failed to respond to a police officers request to go with the teacher and slammed his classroom door shut. He was subsequently taken into police custody, handcuffed, transported to the police station and charged with disturbing a lawful assembly.4 This incident representative of many others uncovered by ACLU research shows not only the inappropriate use of school-based arrests, but also the way in which a regular police presence in schools can encourage reliance on law enforcement to handle simple student misbehavior that was previously and should be handled by school personnel.

Johanna Wald and Lisa Thurau, First, Do No Harm: How Educators and Police Can Work Together More Effectively to Preserve School Safety and Protect Vulnerable Students (2010). Justice Policy Institute, Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools (2011). 2 Bureau of Justice Statistics, US Dept of Justice Office of Justice Programs, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2009. 3 Stephanie Chen, Girl's arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance. CNN (February 18, 2010). Salecia Johnson: 6-year-old handcuffing sparks school debate. Associated Press (April 18, 2012). Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track (2005). ACLU/ACLU of Massachusetts, Arrested Futures: The Criminalization of School Discipline in Massachusetts Three Largest School Districts (2012). Justice Policy Institute, Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools (2011). 4 ACLU/ACLU of Massachusetts, Arrested Futures: The Criminalization of School Discipline in Massachusetts Three Largest School Districts (2012).

New York City, which employs a dedicated school security force of over 5,000, shows a similar over-reliance on law enforcement to solve regular school problems. In 2010, a 12-year-old student who wrote I love my friends Abby and Faith on her desk was handcuffed, walked out of the school in front of her peers, and charged with vandalism.5 In NYC schools with permanent metal detectors, 77 percent of incidents in which police personnel were involved during the 2004-2005 school year were classified as non-criminal.6 By contrast, when the ACLU studied six NYC public schools that promoted more nurturing environments, they found not only that they maintained safety without heavy reliance on police, but also that they had better graduation rates.7 Students of color bear the brunt of over-policing, and we must seriously consider how it affects their learning environment and their future. While some of the key incidents triggering increased police presence (Columbine, for instance, and now Newtown) have taken place in predominantly white suburban communities, the heaviest daily police/security presence is in larger schools, schools with greater percentages of students receiving reduced price lunch, and schools in urban environments.8 In addition, individual students of color are more likely to be arrested than their white peers for the exact same misbehaviors. ACLU research from Connecticut, for instance, found that white students in East Hartford were almost never arrested for possessing or using illegal drugs, while most African-American students committing the same infraction were arrested.9 According to federal data, more than 70 percent of students arrested or referred to law enforcement during the 2009-2010 school year were Hispanic or African-American.10 Students with disabilities can also suffer disproportionately from over-policing, and in some cases may end up arrested for behaviors that are manifestations of their disabilities.11

Stephanie Chen, Girl's arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance. CNN (February 18, 2010). Sean Gardiner, Desk Arrest Stirs Protest. The Wall Street Journal (September 8, 2010). 6 ACLU/ACLU of New York, Criminalizing the Classroom: the Over-Policing of New York City Schools (2007). 7 NYCLU, Annenberg Institute for School Reform and Make the Road New York, Safety with Dignity: Alternatives to the Over-Policing of Schools (2009). 8 National Center for Education Statistics, US Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics 2008 (table 159); as pointed out in Peter Price, When Is A Police Officer an Officer of the Law?: The Status of Police Officers in Schools, The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 99:2 (2009). 9 ACLU/ACLU of Connecticut, Hard Lessons: School Resource Officer Programs and School-Based Arrests in Three Connecticut Towns (2008). 10 U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, The Transformed Civil Rights Data Collection (March 2012). 11 ACLU/ACLU of Massachusetts, Arrested Futures: The Criminalization of School Discipline in Massachusetts Three Largest School Districts (2012). Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track (2005). Justice Policy Institute, Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools (2011).

This overly-criminalizing and misguided approach to school safety that is the inevitable outcome of employing law enforcement in the school environment has serious negative consequences for youth, causing emotional trauma and increasing the likelihood that they will drop out of school.12

12

Gary Sweeten, Who Will Graduate? Disruption of High School Education by Arrest and Court Involvement, Justice Quarterly 23:4 (2006). Stephanie Chen, Girl's arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance. CNN (February 18, 2010). Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track (2005).