Thread by @nithyavraman

Today @LA_StudentsDsrv, a coalition of students, teachers and parents, marched alongside @BLMLA to defund the Los Angeles School Police Department.

So let’s talk about policing in schools. Why has it become so widespread, and how has it affected our kids? (thread)

School Resource Officers date back to the 1950s, but were exceedingly rare. That changed in the 90's due to large grants from the Justice Dept.

The two biggest factors? Anxiety about “juvenile superpredators” stoked by conservative media and Columbine. thenation.com/article/archiv…

Cops are now in more than 40% of schools. The LA School Police is the largest of its kind in the US.

Funded by LAUSD, the LASPD is the 14th largest police force in the state, dwarfing departments in most cities. And it has a checkered history of its own. latimes.com/california/sto…

One LASPD Chief let 16 internal affairs investigations languish so long, no officers were punished. One was later convicted of sexual assault.

Another Chief militarized the department with a SWAT team, a canine unit, and LAPD-like uniforms and cars.
laweekly.com/lausds-finest-…

More recently, the LASPD made news for accepting military-grade weaponry from the US Department of Defense -- including grenade launchers, rifles, and a “mine-resistant” armored vehicle.

The last of those weapons were finally returned in 2017. dailynews.com/2014/11/21/lau…

How do School Police officers primarily affect students? They carry out large numbers of arrests and citations for offenses that might otherwise fall under school discipline.

An analysis by UCLA found that LASPD made 3,389 arrests between 2014 and 2017.

assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6940…

Reflecting other law enforcement contexts, school policing has primarily focused on criminalizing Black youth.

The UCLA report found that 25% of total LA School Police actions were against Black children, despite the fact that only about 8% of the student population is Black.

LASPD reported 34 uses of pepper spray on students over the last three years.

LAUSD’s Superintendent responded yesterday, saying that school police should be banned from using pepper spray and carotid holds.

But the problem goes much deeper. latimes.com/california/sto…

Policing in schools doesn’t just criminalize kids. It’s also been linked to worse educational outcomes.

A rigorous study of a police intervention in Texas schools found that the result was lower high school graduation and college enrollment rates. drive.google.com/file/d/1XbO7qy…

One possible reason school policing leads to lower student performance?

Studies have shown that an arrest doubles a high school student’s likelihood of dropping out -- and subsequent court involvement doubles those odds yet again. aclunc.org/docs/20161019-…

Tragic consequences like these motivated @UTLANow to vote last week in support of defunding the LASPD.

The $63 million budget, according to UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl, could be used to hire some 800 desperately needed counselors. dailynews.com/2020/06/09/tea…

Brave student activists like @LA_StudentsDsrv and their youth justice advocate allies have been pushing hard on this issue for years.

Thanks to their work, this two-decade senseless surge in funding for police in schools is finally being given the critical eye it deserves.