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"School Policing" in the US
Saint Madness
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Registered User regular
This article was in yesterday's Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools
It's quite long and equally horrifying in what it describes.
It goes on to things like this.
The bolded part is the most shocking to me.
An attempt to overturn the policing system by a state senator failed and can't be tried again for 2 years, as for what the police themselves have to say about this...
I'm not American and have no experience of your education system, are things really as authoritarian as this article make them out to be? I'm aware that this is confined to only a few states but considering that it's in place in Texas and California I imagine it affects quite a lot of kids and I can only wonder what sort of generation it's going to shape.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools
It's quite long and equally horrifying in what it describes.
"I'm weird. Other kids don't like me," said Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight. "They were saying a lot of rude things to me. Just picking on me. So I sprayed myself with perfume. Then they said: 'Put that away, that's the most terrible smell I've ever smelled.' Then the teacher called the police."
The policeman didn't have far to come. He patrols the corridors of Sarah's school, Fulmore Middle in Austin, Texas. Like hundreds of schools in the state, and across large parts of the rest of the US, Fulmore Middle has its own police force with officers in uniform who carry guns to keep order in the canteens, playgrounds and lessons. Sarah was taken from class, charged with a criminal misdemeanour and ordered to appear in court.
Each day, hundreds of schoolchildren appear before courts in Texas charged with offences such as swearing, misbehaving on the school bus or getting in to a punch-up in the playground. Children have been arrested for possessing cigarettes, wearing "inappropriate" clothes and being late for school.
In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 "Class C misdemeanour" tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, community service and even prison time. What was once handled with a telling-off by the teacher or a call to parents can now result in arrest and a record that may cost a young person a place in college or a job years later.
It goes on to things like this.
Austin's school police department is well armed with officers carrying guns and pepper spray, and with dog units on call for sniffing out drugs and explosives.
According to the department's records, officers used force in schools more than 400 times in the five years to 2008, including incidents in which pepper spray was fired to break up a food fight in a canteen and guns were drawn on lippy students.
The bolded part is the most shocking to me.
An attempt to overturn the policing system by a state senator failed and can't be tried again for 2 years, as for what the police themselves have to say about this...
Chief Brian Allen, head of the school police department for the Aldine district and president of the Texas school police chiefs' association, is having none of it.
"There's quite a substantial number of students that break the law. In Texas and in the US, if you're issued a ticket, it's not automatically that you're found guilty. You have an opportunity to go before the judge and plead your case. If you're a teacher and a kid that's twice as big as you comes up and hits you right in the face, what are you going to do? Are you going to use your skills that they taught you or are you going to call a police officer?"
I'm not American and have no experience of your education system, are things really as authoritarian as this article make them out to be? I'm aware that this is confined to only a few states but considering that it's in place in Texas and California I imagine it affects quite a lot of kids and I can only wonder what sort of generation it's going to shape.
Saint Madness on
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I went to high school in an affluent part of Texas over a decade ago. We did have a uniform police officer in our school, but I never heard of such ridiculous misdemeanors being handed out. This seems to be a new thing.
Oh that'll be interesting to see.
Were they in any way armed?
The way some of these kids can shoot in those areas, I think the police wouldn't be effective at all.
Land of the free, police officers in schools, pointing guns at middle schoolers.
We only had one cop at school at a time and yes he had his gun on him. It didn't seem scary or overbearing, but that's probably because the guy would have friendly conversations with the students.
Edit: It seems I put said "police officers" in my original post. I corrected that so it is singular.
here's a useful example of how we don't participate in topical threads, everyone
School Resource Officers seem to be something altogether different. I know they have it in some of the larger schools up here in Edmonton, but you have to go through special training and your job is almost entirely 'be there as a resource for the students to call on, do the 'say no to drugs' presentation and generally just interact with everyone in a positive fashion'. What the OP is talking about is something entirely different and very scary. The only time a firearm should ever be drawn in a school is if someone's life is being directly threatened. Not because someone's being 'lippy'.
Yeah we had an armed Police Officer, too. It never seemed like a big deal though. Nobody was getting arrested for stupid shit and he never shot, sprayed, or assaulted anyone. Mostly he watched for cigarettes and actual criminal activity. I think most people felt mostly safer.
But again, these guys are ticketing people for being late so YEAH.
https://gofund.me/fa5990a5
But this is just Texas ass-hats being Texas ass-hats.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
In fact, when I'd skip school with my friends to go to McD's, he'd let us go as long as we brought back some fries. Or he'd let us go to the cornerstore gas station if we'd bring him back a pack of smokes.
Of course, this was pre-Columbine, so maybe that's something that's changed a lot since I was in HS.
We had no security prior to that, like, at all. In High School, there was a fight, and several teachers got involved and broke it up. They jumped in and separated the students. Security was worthless and patrolling the surrounding area to report the students who have parked illegally to the real police.
So, anecdotes?
We had two filling that position during my four years and both officers were awesome as all hell. Very respect-worthy; I had interesting (legitimately, not 'interesting') discussions with both of them.
These guys, are, as previously stated, asshats.
Having a cop or two assigned to a school is pretty common. They have them here in florida as well, for the most part they seemed to wander about making an effort to be friendly, and they didn't write tickets to kids or anything. A couple arrests for weapons, drugs and fighting. Just as I graduated, it became illegal for a student or faculty member to posses tobacco withing a 1/4 mile of a school, and that generated some tickets. Not just for students.
Ideally, your paying a couple cops to do outreach stuff, and a bit of law enforcement when required. Schools are what? A couple thousand people or so? To 1 cop, maybe 2, that's not a authoritarian distopia. I'd kinda expect some police presence where 2000 people congregated regularly.
There some rather stupid laws on a lot of books, that make it illegal to disrupt a classroom, and some of them, because they were designed to combat people protesting against desegregation, have some teeth. I doubt there is any connection between the presence of a police officer, and the number of charges flooding the texas juvinal court system. It is probably a combination of over-zealous administrators pressing charges to seem tough on.... i don't fucking know, children, and the existance of too god damned many zero tolerance policies that sound like a great idea if you don't bother to think, and result in a lot of trivial shit getting blow totally out of proportion(like kids getting arrested for giving out aspirin, because of drug zero tolerance policies) getting blow out of proportion.
edit: after re-reading there may be something fundamentally broken about the understood mission of the particular cops in question.
My view might be a little shaped by attending a gifted program at a magnet school, in the ghetto. They had locked gates while students where there, and regularly the school would be locked down because some drug dealer had decided to run from the cops. The year I started, they had just taken down the barbed wire, but they still had they metal brackets dealies for it up. No metal detectors or anything though.
While texas seems to be doing something badly, I don't think that says much about the presence of police officers in schools or is a sign of an authoritarian shift in how schools are run at large.
The modern American public school system isn't an educational system. It hasn't been since the 80's, really. The problem became worse after Columbine, and suddenly school system could do whatever they wanted to "maintain security" on campuses. It has more in common with the prison system than it does a school system. To parents, it's like a publicly funded daycare system. Students will tell you it's a lot like jail. Thankfully, there are still teachers who want to educate students and rail against the system. Every year new bright-eyed teachers with hopes of educating young people graduate. Very few enter the profession for a paycheck. It's really something you need to have a passion for. They are pretty few and far between though, and many teachers have been demoralized both by the administration and parents.
It's a pretty bleak situation, but no one is talking about the real problem - the system. Elected officials (re: politicians) want to blame it on the teachers, who are not the problem. The real problem is the administrative staff and the elected council members. Just two years ago, I remember reading a story about our local counties Board of Education flying to Hawaii so they could have a discussion about school funding cuts. This is not an uncommon occurance. That is some serious corruption, right there. Then they assign their friends and family to the administrative staff of the schools, regardless of their background in education. And because no one cares the same people get re-elected over and over until they're ready to retire.
That's the situation in our county and I imagine many other accross the US counties suffer from the similiar problems. I can't say that this holds true for every county, I'm sure there are some dedicated education official in council positions accross the US. But the educational system in the US is in dire need of some real reform, if not complete dismantling and starting over.
Edit: They've brought in dogs to sniff lockers in the past, too. Again, it was kinda called for.
I think, given Texas current situation, the level of outrage will depend on the whiteness of the student
I'm not even being snarky, remember when that one guy killed a Mexican kid for stealing from him and the community was aghast that he was even arrested?
I do have a problem with cops being dicks to kids.
Unfortunately, given American cops, putting a cop in a public school increases the likelihood that he's going to be a dick to kids about a thousand-fold.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Actually, studies are showing that drug dogs have a serious Clever Hans problem.
Thank you, that's a very articulate explanation.
The whole concept is quite alien to me, anyone caught with drugs in our schools are usually just suspended afaik and guns are a rare problem, even our police don't typically carry firearms.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/help-stop-the-macing-of-students-in-birmingham-ala-schools
http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/aclu-lawsuit-challenges-abusive-police-practices-new-york-city-schools
Again, I really can't get my head around this, how much control do parents have over school boards?
I...
What!
https://gofund.me/fa5990a5
Parents actually tend to be in support of such measures. Most parent seem to worry more about "protecting' their children and don't view there rights as important. It wouldn't have surprised me if that story ended with the Mother berating her daughter for not obeying the police officer.
https://gofund.me/fa5990a5
Precisely none.
Unless you can start influencing elections.
It already happened. Read the article. A kid had an airsoft gun and was shot dead. No doubt the kid was stupid, but if the armed cops hadn't been there no one would have been hurt.
Mayhap a better way to do it would be asking yourself why it is needed. I am honestly appalled at students basically being treated like chattel, which is the impression I'm getting from here. Do feel free to explain to me why it isn't like that. I live in sweden, if it matters, and finished year 12 (think that's high school right?) about 8 years ago. My school was only about 500 students though, so I guess it may be worse once it gets larger.