Removing law enforcement personnel from schools has been a key demand of civil rights organizations and the Black Lives Matter movement for years.
In recent months, due in part to the nationwide protests against the unlawful death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer, school districts in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, Portland, Ore., and San Francisco have moved to cut ties with the police.
We’ve partnered with Dignity in Schools, the Education Civil Rights Alliance, and others to pursue this work. With your help, we will conduct legal research to help achieve the movement goal of removing law enforcement personnel from schools.
Law enforcement personnel in schools are a key part of “the school-to-prison pipeline”, a phrase describing how school policies often lead black and brown students into the criminal justice system. See e.g. a 3-minute primer video on the issue by Vox. Although having law enforcement personnel in schools was conceived as a way to protect students from rare mass school shootings, law enforcement personnel in schools are concentrated in schools that are majority children of color and lead to children being arrested and brutalized over minor disciplinary issues. See e.g. recent examples in South Carolina, Texas, and Florida.
Meanwhile, in more affluent schools without law enforcement personnel, minor disciplinary issues are handled by a trip to the principal's office, and without physical and emotional trauma or legal consequences.
Unfortunately, our federal system limits what can be done on the national level—the U.S. Constitution largely reserves both education and policing policy to the state and local level. Thus, to truly address the issue, state and local work is required. This project will be to research existing state and local laws pertaining to the use of law enforcement in schools. If warranted by the findings, we may then work with coalition partners to draft model state-level legislation on the use of SROs.
Click here to view full project details and instructions for participating attorneys.