“You’re a cop, so until you prove otherwise that you have good intentions, I’m gonna be wary.”
That’s how one Black student feels about student resource officers patrolling their school.
The student wasn’t alone. During a 2021 roundtable discussion hosted by The Children's Policy and Law Initiative of Indiana, several other students reported they had been sprayed with mace in school and that drug dogs regularly searched the hallways.
Many others reported that student resource officers at their schools escalate situations. Black students said they perceive police not as a resource, but as an enforcer there to punish.
“I’ve never seen police in my school building relationships,” one student said. “They act like a drill sergeant.”
Black students’ feelings about school resource officers aren’t based just on personal experience. Data shows the reality is rooted in fact.
“We have long known in schools and in society in general that students of color are disproportionately receiving disciplinary consequences,” said Matt Scheibel, executive director of safety at Fort Wayne Community Schools. “Unfortunately, that’s been the case for far too long.”
A STORY IN NUMBERS
Black youth last year were 4.6 times more likely than whites to be referred to juvenile courts, according to the state’s racial disparity dashboard.
That number is far higher in some areas, such as Tippecanoe County, where Black students are nearly 13 times more likely than whites to face a judge.
Last year, over 31% of all students arrested at schools were Black. That’s despite the fact those students make up just 12.5% of the statewide school population.
White students, on the other hand, represent 66% of school populations, but just 41% off all arrests on school property, according to arrest data provided to the Indiana Department of Education by 54 counties.
Across all offenses, Black youth are consistently overrepresented. The largest disparities: Blacks are more than 200% more likely than whites to be referred to courts for theft and battery. That’s according to a report published this year by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute analyzing racial disparities among youth.
None of the state data indicates whether arrests or referrals were made explicitly by a school resource officer.
However, a national study by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2019 found schools with police officers on average have 3.5 more arrests than those that don’t, and Black students are 3 times more likely than white students to be arrested.
Even so, nearly every county reported it has not taken steps to address racial and ethnic disparities, according to the criminal institute’s analysis. In fact, most counties reported knowing that Black youth are generally arrested at a disproportionate rate. Local officials just don’t believe that happens in their county.
None of the data has stopped Indiana from investing heavily in school resource officers. In 2022, the state allocated about $13.4 million to hire school officers through its Secured School Safety Grant Program. This year, that number spiked to $19.5 million.
HELPING OR HURTING?
The impulse to hire officers to patrol schools is understandable, noted Jennifer O’Neill, an Indiana University researcher who focuses on school experiences and delinquent behavior.
In 2021, when students began returning to the classroom amid the COVID-19 pandemic, schools nationwide saw a huge increase in the number of incidents of gunfire on school grounds, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
“If you’re seeing SROs as a relatively quick way to improve perceptions of security in school, it appeals to people to have more police on the grounds,” O’Neill said. “It’s something that makes parents happy.”
The motivation may be justified, but the consequences for Black students are often negative, she argued.
In Black communities already wary of police, having police officers in schools can make students of color feel disconnected from the classroom. That’s especially true when officers intervene in minor classroom misbehaviors such as students not giving up their phone, youth explained at the 2021 roundtable.
Those kinds of calls for law enforcement involvement increase the risk of escalation and can ultimately end in unnecessary student referrals and arrests, according to the children’s law group.
“Racial minorities and black students in particular feel like they’re being criminalized and being over surveilled,” O’Neil said. “They’re walking into school past police officers, and that is going to have this negative effect.”
But school resource officers who are properly trained and understand their roles can have the opposite effect on Black students and racial disparities, argued Julie Q-Smith, past president of the Indiana School Resource Officers Association and a school resource officer with the Columbus Police Department.
In Indiana, school officers are required to undergo 40 hours of training that includes identifying implicit bias police might have toward students of color. The training includes discussions and roleplaying scenarios officers might face in the classroom.
“It’s helping them learn to just be thoughtful about perception,” Q-Smith said.
School resource officers are also taught to approach their position as not just a police officer, but as an informal counselor and public safety educator who can help stop the disproportionate arrest of Black students, she argued.
“Our job in a day is not to see how many kids we can prematurely introduce into the juvenile justice system,” Q-Smith said. “Officers are doing anything and everything they can to support and help to avoid those things.”
A NEW APPROACH
In the fall of 2022, staff at Fort Wayne Community Schools in just three months found nine handguns on school property, setting off alarm bells for parents, students and staff. The incidents could have spurred administrators at the state’s largest school district to hire a host of new police officers to increase school patrols. Instead, officials decided to try something different.
This year, the district is onboarding nearly 60 student advocates whose primary roles are increasing student well-being, as well as adding extra security throughout the district’s 50 schools, checking to make sure all doors are locked and ensuring kids make it to class on time.
Scheibel, the district’s executive director of safety, said the advocates are not police officers and don’t have any arresting powers. Administrators are ensuring the advocates they hire reflect the racial diversity of the students.
“We’ve been intentional to really make sure that kids can see themselves in the advocates,” he said. The district is hiring 18 more mental-health therapists. An additional $3 million will pay to bring in mental-and-social health programs, including a Peacemaker Academy that teaches high schoolers Martin Luther King Jr.’s principals of nonviolent leadership. The funding to pay for the new positions and programs came after voters approved a $12.2 million referendum in November.
The core goal of the referendum is to move away from school policing and instead focus on the root causes of students acting out, Scheibel explained.
“If you connect a lot of the factors that threaten safety, oftentimes they’re connected to mental health,” he said.
© 2024 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.