The US schools with their own police

The Guardian ^ | Monday 9 January 2012 | Chris McGreal

[metmom]

More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour?

The charge on the police docket was "disrupting class". But that's not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest for spraying two bursts of perfume on her neck in class because other children were bullying her with taunts of "you smell".

"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.

[basil]

I live in an Austin suburb—if any of this is true, I certainly haven’t heard of it.

[metmom]

ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL

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I know this is an older article, but I did a search and it hadn't been posted.

Welcome to the U.S.S.A.

[upchuck]

Sarah, who has been diagnosed with attention-deficit and bipolar disorders and who is conscious of being overweight.

This kid is well on her way to receiving a SSI check (paid for by you and me) for life.

Around here these cops are called "resource officers."

[muawiyah]

Bipolar is treatable these days ~ to a degree. Still, a quick review of the literature reveals no instances of it disappearing because an armed officer of the law was present on the scene.

I wonder why the school district ~ that's Austin, right, the Leftwingtard capital of the SW, oh so Progressive and modern ~ is mainstreaming kids with bipolar disorder.

And who'se that utterly contemptible woman running the class who calls the cops on her bipolar student?

I think something is screwy in this story ~ although if it's true I'd be checking the principal's basement to see if he's got people chained to the wall or something, real medieval like.

[Eva]

Maybe it is a matter of what “being arrested” means. Perhaps being arrested is the same as being sent to the vice principal’s office for discipline.

I remember that in my senior year, a teacher who was assigned lunch duty, sent our whole lunch table to the vice principal’s office and gave us all school detentions for singing Happy Birthday at the lunch table.

The only reason that we could figure was that someone had drawn a picture of tinkerbell and stuck it to his door, and that he must have concluded that it was us. As far as I knew, it wasn’t. He was this little gay guy, but we didn’t do it.

[I see my hands]

Don't worry the oath keepers will protect us. Not to mention I hear all the time, "If that were my child."

Everything is fine. Checks and balances, Tree of liberty, etc.

[KantianBurke]

“The result, says the Appleseed report, is that “school-to-prison pipeline” in which a high proportion of children who receive tickets and end up in front of a court are arrested time and again because they are then marked out as troublemakers or find their future blighted by a criminal record.”

They’re arrested time and again because they’re feral and haven’t moved up to the big time of committing the usual assortment of violent crimes. The sooner the rotten apples are ID’ed and removed from society the better.

[bill1952]

I don’t believe this article is accurate.
I would like to see some proof of any of this.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Free public education is plank ten of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.

Can we all agree that that the Communist public school experiment has failed, and it is time to try something else?

:)

[Widows Son]

I don’t consider this a “bad kids” issue. Its a bad parents issue. When I was growing up, misbehavior in scholl had very real and unpleasant consequences at home. We have tied the hands of school faculty (those that still have the cajones to actually be a role model)and many now blame the misbehavior of children on the school. The blame is with the parents, I am reminded of the news article of the “man” who almost beat his daughters basketball coach to death for making her run laps for misbehaving during practice. Great message to teach your kid huh?

[MeganC]

We homeschool our kids and we go the step further that our kids do not have Social Security numbers so the school districts and the social workers don’t even know they’re here. It’s much easier that way and worth the extra taxes.

[precisionshootist]

I live is Texas also and I’ve never heard of any of this. Something does not sound right. Kids arrested everyday at school and having to appear in court does not sound like something we would put up with to any extent whatsoever.

[AFreeBird]

A HS I went to back in the late 70’s here in Indy, had cops. A result of the busing decision back in the 60’s that saw knife fights in the restrooms and halls.

I hated that school.

[Donnafrflorida]

happens all the time here in polk county fla.

[MileHi]

Well it is happening, especially since Columbine. Now every school has a “resource officer” who has nothing else to do all day. What used to be normal school (mis)behavior is now “assault” or “criminal mischief” with a court summons. After that it becomes real easy to “re-offend”. Especially if your kid offends or has a conflict of any sort with a “minority” or a “GLBT” student.

[CORedneck]

Back in my hometown - Carmel Indiana, the school system had their police department but I think they discontinued it and are using the city PD as their officer instead.

[robowombat]

Unfortunately a fair percentage of even quite young ‘children’ age 8/9 have grasped that parental threats are hollow as a result of child empowerment via ‘child abuse’ laws. The result is that many parents are greeted by open angry defiance about any sort of discipline or even attempts to enforce rules in the home. Those parents who will actually tell the truth (admittedly a small minority) will provide chapter and verse of being told’ F you you can't make me do that. Nobody can.’ or ‘Go to H-ll old man. I'll come and go as I please.’ or my favorite that my foul tempered step daughter was fond of ‘Nobody is going to tell me what to do.” Ironically schools now have a much bigger arsenal of legal ‘pains and punishments’ to deal with discipline and behavior problems than they did thirty years ago while parents authority has been systematically undermined by both the culture and the rule making therapeutic culture. Once more the state has been made more powerful and the citizen's informal authority greatly diminished. This is in many ways a parable for our times about the general drift of a society that places its faith in the formal rule driven ‘expert’ entities and views the organic institutions of society such as the family with distrust.

[itsahoot]

Maybe it is a matter of what “being arrested” means.

They have police in schools because they have real criminals attending. Every child criminal that is on probation, must attend school as a condition of parole, you would not now that because their records are sealed.

Teachers do have to be told if they have a student in their room that has been arrested or convicted for a violent act.

Kids used to go to reform school if they couldn’t make it in regular school, they don't do that anymore, but that did not solve the problem, merely hid it back in the classroom.

I was in a teacher's classroom once and he told me look around you, there are the future presidents, governors, policemen, congressman, lawyers, bank robbers, ax murderers, serial killers, perverts....They all come through here.

[verga]

Can we all agree that that the Communist public school experiment has failed, and it is time to try something else?

What do you suggest?

Public schools work for 80% of the population.

I am not opposed to charter, private, Magnet, parochial schools, Voucher programs, Home schooling. But one size does not fit all.