A new report from Lawyers for Good Government shows that school police are held even less accountable for abuses than cops overall due to court-created norms that give them nearly limitless power.
Today, L4GG released a report which finds that police in schools often get away with abusing children. This is due to the confluence of two contentious court-created legal standards: qualified immunity and the court’s interpretation of their duty to maintain order in the school. Together, they give school police, administrators and teachers nearly limitless power, while abdicating them of their responsibilities under the Constitution and despite us finding nearly 250 instances of documented in-school abuse of children by officers pledged to their care. Children’s rights are swept aside, leaving them without any protection from beatings, handcuffings, false arrest and even sexual violence.
A map of states where students have lower constitutional protection from abuse.
Moreover, the report finds that the presence of police in schools is correlated with more punitive discipline, higher rates of referrals to law enforcement and on-campus arrests, lower grades and decreased graduation rates, and more.
In particular, the report finds that:
School police officers are immune from being held accountable for violations of civil rights. An absurd application of the law results in cops getting away with wide-ranging, unconstitutional offenses against minors, such as strip searches, isolation, and excessive force that results in injuries, such as a broken arm.
Although many imagine that increased law enforcement personnel in schools will protect children from rare mass school shootings, in practice, school police officers instead arrest and brutalize children over minor disciplinary issues.
Police in schools do not make them more safe from school shootings — instead, police in schools over-police children of color and students with disabilities, leaving them traumatized and underprotected.
Over 500 national, state, and local organizations support removing permanent police presence from schools.
School “safety” overall is an over $2.7 billion dollar industry, while public schools nationwide are underfunded by $150 billion annually.
This report is especially relevant as students across the nation continue to suffer abuse at the hands of school cops - just this month, a 15-year-old student in Rockford, IL was body-slammed by a police officer and suffered a fractured skull and permanent brain damage.
Schools are not prisons. It is time for policymakers to stop pushing policies that make schools resemble prisons instead of the nurturing educational environment they are supposed to be.
““Our findings are clear: not only do police make schools less safe for students, there is also a dangerous lack of basic accountability for police misconduct in schools. Increasing the number of police officers in our schools would be dangerous to the health, well-being and focus of our public school students, particularly students of color. We must provide better state level protections from police in school misconduct, stop investing in school police officers, and start investing instead in effective interventions that make schools a safer learning environment, like stationing counselors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers.” ”