Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/10/the-aclu-analyzed-the-number-o.html
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My wife is a school psychologist. She has worked in 4 different districts in MA and we obviously have had 3 kids in one RI district. We see it first hand from both sides as the worker and parents and it is staggering.
We have to pull teeth and sacrifice virgins to get counseling or special ed aid for our kids. But if they ever do something wrong it’s immediate and swift summary judgment and punishment.
My daughter in her senior year bumped someone’s car in the parking lot. The resource officer was on it that day with a police report of a hit and run against her.
So quick to punish these kids before they even get going in life.
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When I was in High School and Junior High counselors were not really an option. Oh sure, they existed, and we met with them on occasion (mandatory), but if you were getting bullied, if you were getting ostracized, you didn’t go to the counselors. Counselors might be able to stop a single bully from harassing you, but there’s no way for them to make you accepted. You either subsumed your anger and frustration, or you acted out, and once someone acted out, THEN counselors were called in to address the problem.
Someone once said “high school is four years of using all your energy to avoid embarrassment.” We don’t need cops, we need counselors that kids can trust and who can provide solutions to awkward teenage/adolescent problems. Bringing in cops is basically admitting defeat.
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Using cops in schools is slapping a band-aid on internal hemorrhaging.
So many schools are underfunded, so many families living in poverty, with food and housing insecurity, basic access to laundry, etc is dehumanizing.
We had one “resource officer” who’s job seemed to be napping in the parking lot and ineffectually yelling at kids to come back when they ditched. And we were FINE. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to put up my “get off my lawn” signs.
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Putting cops in schools is like a bad restaurant hiring a nurse to look after the guests…
You are not solving the problem, you are just sidestepping it so you don’t have to deal with the real issue.
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If you’re looking for a issue by issue analysis, with suggested alternative solutions, to the problems with policing, a good book to read would be The End of Policing.
This is next in my reading list, Are Prisons Obsolete? Angela Davis is one of my favorite speakers to listen to, and I expect her arguments against the prison system to be worth the read.
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This is what you get when you vote Republican, when we live in a world of “zero tolerance” and “broken window policing” policies.
This country is full of goons who like it this way. We have too many people in authority, and too many people who support and vote for them, who like the idea of using a hammer for every problem. Siccing the cops on somebody is much quicker, and easier, and for too many people more emotionally satisfying, than trying to understand and help somebody.
This country is full of privately run for-profit prisons. Some of the reasons there are cops in schools instead of counselors is because there are people who have a vested financial interest in turning kids into their products at an early age.
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This was my experience in school as well and the counselor was basically just a career advisor for the “good” kids (read: wealthy families and “pillars of the community” types). In reality, he was hired to be a golf coach who also had a counselor’s office, which was also the case for the wrestling coach/art teacher (seriously, macrame was one of my senior projects — fucking macrame).
That being said, I know a lot of people who are either counselors or work with them, my wife being one. Many of them are about the only thing keeping kids out of the juvie -> prison pipeline. Not because they’re inherently broken, but because the system itself is and would rather cast them off than deal. They’re also often the first line of defense against domestic abuse and neglect.
Honestly, even if half of them suck, it’s better than a fucking gun-wielding sociopath prowling the halls. You know what they say about hammers and nails…
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I work with various school districts in the Southwest. One of the districts I work with received a grant that allowed them to either bring in a school resource officer or a social worker/counselor. They opted to try to bring a social worker/ counselor and have spent over 10 months attempting to hire someone to no avail.
They have received only one application that met the requirements and that person backed out because they didn’t want to move out to a rural area. The other two applicants did not have the certifications or education level to meet the grant requirements.
It’s very frustrating as they are trying to do what is best for their students and are unable to do so. My guess is, if they had opted for a school resource officer they would have been flooded with applicants and been able to hire someone within two weeks of posting. $60K a year with benefits probably looks better to a small-town police officer than to a certified counselor.
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They’re useless, too. When I was in high school, when I would walk home some people in a car would yell and throw rocks at me as they drove by. I never found out who, but based on their age I suspected they were fellow students. I got the license plate number and reported it to the school cop. Nothing was done and I had to change the route by which I walked home to avoid them.
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I’ve heard too many stories about schools with metal detectors at the front doors and students passing weapons through the windows.
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Worth a look too is the ACLU’s report on how the militarization of police departments has ruined everything.
At my elementary school the main function of the local PD was to administer the D.A.R.E. program. I was a pretty straight-and-narrow kind of kid but the most lasting lesson I remember was “the cops will lie straight to your face about stuff like drugs so maybe don’t take their word for other stuff either.”
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