More police isn't the answer after Texas shooting, experts say

NBC News / Comcast ^ | May 31, 2022 | By Char Adams (D-NBC)

[Oldeconomybuyer]

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District in Texas has its own police department, complete with four officers, a detective and security staff who patrol the campus and its entrances. This didn’t prevent a gunman from killing 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School last week.

“The research is clear that more police and hardening schools doesn’t work,” said Patrick Bresette, executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund of Texas.

This debate over school police isn’t new, though. Organizers have long pointed out the negative impacts of police in schools: Black and Latino children are more likely to be criminalized by school officers, and there are no sweeping federal laws that regulate the police use of force on students. In the last 15 years, police in schools across the country have been reported as punishing students for common childhood behaviors such as talking back to teachers and fighting.

Advocates say that discussions about school policing must acknowledge racial disparities. Schools with larger Black and Latino populations are more likely to have police officers in the halls, metal detectors and security cameras, making the students more likely to be stunned, assaulted or pepper-sprayed by police. And police often criminalize Black children for conduct considered common among kids — like mouthing off or fighting at school.

Experts say ramping up police presence at schools will disproportionately impact Black and Latino students. The University at Albany and RAND study also found that school officers’ presence leads to more suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, chronic absences and arrests for students, and Black students are two times more likely than whites to experience these consequences.

[frog in a pot]

Teachers, politicians and academics should have no say in this hiring process. Only a committee of parents should.

Exactly. The parents are the ones with the most important interest at stake and they are the ones who in any event will pay for it.