A typical active shooter drill in a public school. (Image: Larry St.Pierre/Shutterstock)
There is no other way to describe our behavior. Something is wrong with us in so many ways that to say that we need help is to understate the problems. We need lots of help in lots of areas. The truth is that we are desperate for assistance and for the largest part, we don't even have an awareness of our difficulties. The lack of awareness is the greatest problem. In fact, we hide our problems behind a mask of feeling as if we were the greatest of everything. We are delusional.
When we sponsor deranged adults to physically assault children, as we do by placing police officers in elementary schools and allow them to slam children around, we are sick. When we promote the assault and murder of normal citizens by brutes we send into neighborhoods, as we do by placing armed soldiers (police officers) in schools throughout the country, there is something wrong with us.
If we were to attempt to be that which we pretend, we would provide the nation’s children with the necessary resources to support their emotional, mental, and scholastic development through strong school environments.
As with so many of the things we claim we are trying to accomplish, we get the opposite result from our stated goals. Police in schools is "A Counterproductive Violence Reduction Strategy".
Research studies show that placing armed police in schools actually increases physical dangers to youth. |  |
A 2011 longitudinal study of 470 schools nationwide examined school safety over a period of years (2003- 2004, 2005-2006, and 2007-2008) during which police officers were added to some schools but not others
over time. The researchers found “...no evidence suggesting that [School Resource Officers] or other sworn law-enforcement officers contribute to school safety. That is, for no crime type was an increase in the presence of police significantly related to decreased crime rates. The preponderance of evidence suggests that, to the contrary, more crimes involving weapons possession and drugs are recorded in schools that add police officers than in similar schools that do not.”
Most schools continue to be extraordinarily safe places for children. Violence in schools has been dropping steadily for the past 20 years since its peak in 1993, along with violent crime generally. More than 98% of youth homicides do not occur in schools; in the 2009-2010 school year there was approximately one homicide or suicide of school-age youth at school per 2.7 million.2
over time. The researchers found “...no evidence suggesting that [School Resource Officers] or other sworn law-enforcement officers contribute to school safety. That is, for no crime type was an increase in the presence of police significantly related to decreased crime rates. The preponderance of evidence suggests that, to the contrary, more crimes involving weapons possession and drugs are recorded in schools that add police officers than in similar schools that do not.”
Most schools continue to be extraordinarily safe places for children. Violence in schools has been dropping steadily for the past 20 years since its peak in 1993, along with violent crime generally. More than 98% of youth homicides do not occur in schools; in the 2009-2010 school year there was approximately one homicide or suicide of school-age youth at school per 2.7 million.2
And, to nobody's surprise, New Research Shows Schools With More Black Students (Not More Crime) Get More Cops and demonstrating that overpolicing of the black community occurs in schools, too.
As reported in Salon, the video of a school police officer in Columbia, South Carolina, brutally flipping a student backward and then heaving her across the room is instructive because it is not an isolated incident.
Earlier this month, ten people were arrested during protests in Pawtucket, RI, following a videotaped incident of a school police officer aggressively taking down a student who did not appear to pose a threat. In August, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit accusing a school police officer in Covington, KY, of shackling two children with ADHD. The children were only 8 and 9 years old. (A video of one incident is here). In March, the Houston Chronicle reported that “police officers in eight of the largest Houston-area school districts have used force on students and trespassers at least 1,300 times in the last four years.”
Earlier this month, ten people were arrested during protests in Pawtucket, RI, following a videotaped incident of a school police officer aggressively taking down a student who did not appear to pose a threat. In August, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit accusing a school police officer in Covington, KY, of shackling two children with ADHD. The children were only 8 and 9 years old. (A video of one incident is here). In March, the Houston Chronicle reported that “police officers in eight of the largest Houston-area school districts have used force on students and trespassers at least 1,300 times in the last four years.”
As reported in The Atlantic, when a Virginia 4-year-old with ADHD threw a temper tantrum in his prekindergarten classroom late last year—allegedly throwing blocks and hitting and kicking his educators—the school’s principal, according to reports, summoned a deputy assigned to the school, who then handcuffed the child and transported in a squad car to the sheriff’s office. And in a recent episode whose news has since gone viral, a Texas, teen with a keen interest in gadgets built a clock, took it to school to show his teacher, and was sent to juvenile detention when police mistook his device for a bomb.
The details of each of these and other cases vary, but the results have largely been the same. In settings where schooling and policing intersect, the disciplining of students—often for behavior as innocuous as school-age pranks or as commonplace as temper tantrums, and in some cases including children who are so young they still have all their baby teeth—can extend beyond the purview of principals and school staff to law-enforcement who have little to do with education. Data suggests that this is a growing and, for some, disconcerting trend.
The details of each of these and other cases vary, but the results have largely been the same. In settings where schooling and policing intersect, the disciplining of students—often for behavior as innocuous as school-age pranks or as commonplace as temper tantrums, and in some cases including children who are so young they still have all their baby teeth—can extend beyond the purview of principals and school staff to law-enforcement who have little to do with education. Data suggests that this is a growing and, for some, disconcerting trend.
The "school-to-prison pipeline" refers to the policies and practices that push our nation's schoolchildren, especially our most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. This pipeline reflects the prioritization of incarceration over education.
For most students, the pipeline begins with inadequate resources in public schools. Overcrowded classrooms, a lack of qualified teachers, and insufficient funding for "extras" such as counselors, special education services, and even textbooks, lock students into second-rate educational environments.
Lacking resources, facing incentives to push out low-performing students, and responding to a handful of highly-publicized school shootings, schools have embraced zero-tolerance policies that automatically impose severe punishment regardless of circumstances. Under these policies, students have beenexpelled for bringing nail clippers or scissors to school.
For most students, the pipeline begins with inadequate resources in public schools. Overcrowded classrooms, a lack of qualified teachers, and insufficient funding for "extras" such as counselors, special education services, and even textbooks, lock students into second-rate educational environments.
Lacking resources, facing incentives to push out low-performing students, and responding to a handful of highly-publicized school shootings, schools have embraced zero-tolerance policies that automatically impose severe punishment regardless of circumstances. Under these policies, students have beenexpelled for bringing nail clippers or scissors to school.
Individual stories of schools demonstrating both police abuse and police stupidity abound. Police State USA offers a few examples listed below for us to examine: a really good one, showing off the intelligence levels of the system and of the police is this one that took place in Summerville South Carolina where a high school student was suspended from school and taken to jail in handcuffs after he wrote a story about using a gun to kill a dinosaur.
Here are some more: Deputy handcuffs 8-year-old student and watches as he sobs in agony -
Police terrify teachers and students with surprise, guns-drawn ‘active shooter drill’ -
Police impose checkpoints, deploy drones at high school football game -
Pennsylvania mother dies in jail while being punished for kids missing school -
New York school sets up security checkpoints, bans backpacks, restricts bathroom access -
SWAT locks down California school for 4 hours during class-by-class weapons search -
Honor student charged with 2 felonies for making a volcano as science experiment -
Ohio teen faces felony when car searched at school, pocketknife discovered -
NJ boy put through psychiatric testing after ‘twirling pencil’ like a gun -
Police perform ‘simulated drug raid’ on 5th graders; child attacked by K9 -
Here are some more: Deputy handcuffs 8-year-old student and watches as he sobs in agony -
Police terrify teachers and students with surprise, guns-drawn ‘active shooter drill’ -
Police impose checkpoints, deploy drones at high school football game -
Pennsylvania mother dies in jail while being punished for kids missing school -
New York school sets up security checkpoints, bans backpacks, restricts bathroom access -
SWAT locks down California school for 4 hours during class-by-class weapons search -
Honor student charged with 2 felonies for making a volcano as science experiment -
Ohio teen faces felony when car searched at school, pocketknife discovered -
NJ boy put through psychiatric testing after ‘twirling pencil’ like a gun -
Police perform ‘simulated drug raid’ on 5th graders; child attacked by K9 -
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