School Police: Remove Them!

Written by Caleb Garetson

Among hallways crowded or empty and classrooms or cafeterias and library, it is not hard to find a vest strapped onto a blue uniform patrolling with shifting eyes and black boots stomping in an authoritative march; in every high school, including ours, a new regulator can be found, that of the police officer. A regulator whose influence and powers must be absolutely demolished and abolished if schools wish to be safe, enriching, and enhancing for students.

The Department of Justice defined SRO as "sworn law enforcement officers responsible for the safety and crime prevention in schools." Nethertheless this article will use the term School Police Officers as the NAS uses, their reason is “the term school police refers to all officers who are employed in a law enforcement

role and work in school settings. This includes, but is not limited to, school resource officers (SROs), deputies and police officers, school police departments, and armed school-based security personnel. Along with this, using recourse in there name is misleading since it put them in a similar field as school counselors which they most certainly are not.

have been swarming into school buildings since the 90s due to auscultation in school shooting and other threats and their presence and funding has only risen since then.

However, little evidence points to them being helpful. Research done by the National Association of School Psychologists found that there was no correlation between school safety and police presence on campus. “[T]he National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) recommends against school police being involved in student discipline,” with the only thing coming close to a benefit being a decline in gun presence; they quickly point out, however, that this can't be attributed to cops specifically and could very well only be from adult supervision, independence of what role that adult has. Nevertheless, they, along with Booker and Hitchen's Report among other studies, did find a correlation between school police officers and an increase in criminalization for minors and arrest for minor, (most importantly) non-criminal, typical, youthful behavior which has resulted in a school-to-prison pipeline since the number of children surviving jail time, especially for young black men, has increased since the rise of police presence on campus.

What is ironic about this is that there is no decrease in actual crimes on school grounds like, say, drug possession or whenever drugs are found on campus or a dealer gets busted. Do all the drugs and dealers suddenly disappear and vanish? (I think we all know the answer.) Alternatively, take a crime whose very nature makes it impossible and ridiculous even to try to solve and regulate inside the school; take the case of sextortion.

According to Aurora police officer, Tony Tritto, he explained that one of his primary focuses is helping teens with choices: “Especially now with the rise of crimes like sextortion, more and more students across the district are being affected from an unidentifiable source.” Officer Tritto (who was very kind in answering questions that helped show his specific case being a school Police Officer). As he said, most actual crimes affecting students are happening away and outside the school district anyway, so it seems arbitrary to put a cop in the building. All this leads to asking, "How come?” Because cops do not prevent crime, they respond to crime and, at most, end up causing more senseless restrictions and surveillance on students.

It then seems laughable if it was so tragic that funding for this division has risen absurdly. According to Booker and the Hitchen’s Report, the federal government has poured in around 1 billion dollars for school police officers alone, and in Aurora specifically, the budget for our cops comes out to be more or less $400,000 a year out of the school budget. This was told to me by Mr Roberto, who was kind enough to answer a few questions concerning the issue.

Superintendent Roberto also explained how pay is divided: “the City of Aurora covers 60% of the SRO's salary, and the Aurora City Schools cover 40% of the salary.'' However, this funding could be poured into services that have proven to increase prevention and school safety: Counseling.

“But Caleb,” you scream as both hands shake the monitor, “How can we be safe without cops? Moreover, besides, this is based on the person, not the system!” The first point is in response to the last claim. Fortunately, Officer Tritto is more qualified than most.

He explains his credentials and background: “I am registered with the Ohio School Resource Officers Association ‘which requires training to obtain membership. I am also an ALICE-certified instructor, which is what all staff and students in the district are trained on in regard to an active threat situation. K-9 Queso and I are also certified through the North American Police Work Dog Association (NAPWDA) as a detection team." He also “follows the Aurora School Resource Officer program manual, which outlines protocols to follow, and in conjunction with the policies and procedures set forth by the Aurora Police Department.'' Our officer has a good deal of experience (this, unfortunately, is an exception instead of a rule).

The American Civil Liberties Union has found most SPOs have no specific school outline or any formal training specific to school settings, meaning most SPOs are operating in a school building full of children, the way they were trained to deal with criminals on the streets.)

Nevertheless, this issue can not be approached from a pick-and-choose, bad-apple kind of scenario because that is not happening here. If this were the case, statistics and data would show overall positives with a few outliers or mixed results that there would be nothing to conclude from. Even so, as I just spent the last 882 words showing, there is a clear result of harm associated with police in school. On the first complaint, nowhere does it show paranoid surveillance and discipline help; what has been shown to work is community and conversation, counseling, and positive guidance.

To wrap this up, I would like to take a moment to recognize that the police force has not always existed, the same with school shootings and drug trafficking, along with everything else that has infected our schools. These are just symptoms of a more significant sickness in society, and the path to start healing is not by bandaging the infection repeatedly; it starts with us and how we relate to each other. Society is a relationship, and it changes based on how we relate to each other. This task requires changing our focus from regulation and discipline, seeing each other as possible enemies or threats and, instead, seeing one another as people who struggle, who need help, and who live.