More cops+black/brown schools=failure

Tigidankay Saccoh

Pahomov

English 3

October 17, 16

                              Resource Officers and The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Schools are supposed to be safe havens for students, where they can be challenged to grow spiritually and intellectually. When students feel safe in school, they are encouraged to stay motivated and aim for higher-education. However, this feeling of security and belonging now seems like a luxury to poor students, especially minorities. The increased presence of law enforcement in schools of non-white students is deeply rooted in systemic racism and classism. Some may argue that law enforcement in schools enforces order and peace, however this belief is uninformed. The presence of police officers in underprivileged schools is an enabler of the school-to-prison pipeline because it desensitizes students to violence and subjects them to nefarious stereotypes.

The school-to-prison pipeline describes the phenomenon of middle and high school students being funnelled into criminal justice institutions. Many victims of this virulent system are children with learning disabilities, histories of neglect, abuse, and penury. These students are in desperate need of counselling services or basic compassion, but are instead ostracized and incarcerated. Zero-tolerance policies criminalize trivial offences, that can be handled internally.  These policies are employed by law enforcement in schools, and disproportionately hurt students of color. For instance,  a PBS fact sheet on the school-to-prison pipeline reports that 70% of students involved in in-school arrests are Black or Latinx. Moreover, Black students are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended compared to whites, and make up 40% of students who are expelled every year. These figures are not unfortunate coincidences, but evidence that  law enforcement presence in neighborhood schools is a failing disciplinary blueprint.

           On October 26th, 2015, a video of an African-American teenage girl being brutalized in her Spring Valley High School classroom in South Carolina surfaced on the internet. She had refused to heed her teacher’s orders to leave the classroom. The teacher notified a white police officer, Ben Fields, who proceeded to bodyslam the fifteen-year-old in front of her peers. This incident ignited a firestorm of rage from around the country. Fields was criticized over his incompetence and poor-judgement. Despite being paid to de-escalate tension that might arise in the high school, he only violently exacerbated the issue. This event was laced with racial undertones,  and exposed how this type of discrimination existed thematically in poor, majority black and brown schools.  Fields viewed the student as more threatening than she actually appeared, either due to his implicit bias or deliberate discrimination, because she was black.

The school-to-prison pipeline describes the phenomenon of middle and high school students being funnelled into criminal justice institutions. Many victims of this virulent system are children with learning disabilities, histories of neglect, abuse, and penury. These students are in desperate need of counselling services or basic compassion, but are instead ostracized and incarcerated. Zero-tolerance policies criminalize trivial offences, that can be handled internally.  These policies are employed by law enforcement in schools, and disproportionately hurt students of color. For instance,  a PBS fact sheet on the school-to-prison pipeline reports that 70% of students involved in in-school arrests are Black or Latinx. Moreover, Black students are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended compared to whites, and make up 40% of students who are expelled every year. These figures are not unfortunate coincidences, but evidence that increased law enforcement presence in neighborhood schools is a failing disciplinary blueprint.

Cops in schools do not make underprivileged black students feel any less unsafe than cops patrolling their neighborhoods do. Many black students fear an expectation of incriminating when cops infest their learning spaces. Ben Fields could not deescalate the situation with the fifteen year-old girl because he was operating in a discriminatory manner. She was black and female, so she was expected to have an attitude problem and an inclination for anger. More importantly, to Fields, she most likely seemed older than she was, and therefore more responsible for her teenage defiance.

A study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,  examined the extent to which racial bias exists and how scorching its consequences are. 60 urban league  police officers were asked to assess the age of white, black, and Latino children based on photographs in one experiment. The officers were arbitrarily assigned to be told that the children in the photographs were accused of either a misdemeanor or a felony. They overestimated the age of black felony-suspected children on average five years, but they underestimated the age of white felony-suspected children by nearly a year.  This study shows that there is clearly a societal bias against black children. More recently, On November 22, 2014, a little black child, Tamir Rice, age 12, was shot and killed at Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, Ohio by on-duty Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) Officer Timothy Loehmann. Tamir had been playing with a toy-gun, and was mistakenly reported to be a 20-something-year-old man. In schools with law enforcement presence, this bias metamorphoses into violence and fear-instilling tactics.  In these turbulent environments, conflict-resolution is often passed over in favor of harsher interventions and  are readily , implemented.  This study shows that white kids are usually given the benefit of the doubt, while black kids are subconsciously demonized and stripped of their childhood innocence.

The presence of cops in schools also creates a void of sympathy between teachers and students. Some teachers heavily rely on school resource officers to handle situations that can be taken care of in class.When teachers report students to school officers, it almost always leads to suspension or expulsion. A study by The Council of State Governments Justice Center found that, when controlled for campus and individual student characteristics, being suspended or expelled made a student nearly three times more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice system within the next year.  By handing students over to law enforcement, they emotionally disconnect with whatever their troubled students are undergoing, and are not forced to empathize with them. As a result, their classroom because tension-filled, which is not the type of environment that allows students to thrive.

In conclusion,  law enforcement in schools is detrimental to students in more ways than it is beneficial. Their presence can make students feel as if they are predators, and they will most likely be treated as such. School should not be a hostile environment, where students are expected to fail before they are even given a chance to strive. This confrontational disciplinary system has proliferated into a larger disparity for black and brown students, contributing to the mass incarceration epidemic engulfing vulnerable black youth nation-wide. It is imperative that reformed methods of mediation are considered to save minorities from becoming stereotypes.

   Sources:

Fact Sheet: How Bad Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline? (n.d.). Retrieved October 17, 2016, from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/education-under-arrest/school-to-prison-pipeline-fact-sheet/

H. (2014). Police release video, names of officers in shooting of 12-year-old boy. Retrieved October 17, 2016, from http://fox8.com/2014/11/26/video-to-be-released-in-officer-involved-shooting-of-12-year-old/