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Sarah Cook, collaborating photographer
A coalition of Connecticut youth-led organizations recently launched a campaign to remove police from public schools and to change the nature of disciplinary action, giving momentum to a movement that began during summer 2020 events.
The Community First Coalition of Connecticut, a group of local and youth-led organizations, was formed 14 months ago. “Care Not Cops” – the coalition’s first campaign that was launched at a September 18 press conference in Hartford – focuses on removing police from Connecticut public schools. Its main objective is to replace school resource officers, ORS, with school resource advisers, SRCs. It also aims to broaden the definition of ORS to include security guards and non-police actors, advocate for transparency legislation for police-led interactions in schools, and decriminalize chronic absenteeism.
“Why do we need agents with badges to watch our students, saying our students are bad and posted around the school,” said Micheala Barratt, a youth organizer for Radical Advocates for Cross-Cultural Education. “It doesn’t give the impression that the environment is welcoming.
ORS in New Haven
In January, the New Haven Public School Safety and Design Committee gave recommendations to the New Haven Police Department which include increased funding for psychologists, a ban on parking police cars outside of schools, and better definition of the roles of SROs.
In April, the Education Council vote adopt the recommendations of this committee, but they did not vote to withdraw the SROs. However, by adopting these recommendations, the board began its plan to phase out ORS from New Haven schools.
At present, SNPS has five SROs. According to Jahnice Cajigas, organizing director of the Citywide Youth Coalition, the number of OSRs fell from nine to three last year due to budget cuts. NHPD police sergeant Gary Hammill told the News that two more ORS were added at the start of this school year.
These changes in New Haven came after CWYC protests in the summer of 2020, made eight requests, including the replacement of all SROs by advisers. Cajigas told the News that the group led protests outside city hall every Friday last summer. She added that Lihame Arouna, a JJC activist and student board member, proposed the creation of the New Haven School Safety Task Force – which decided on a plan to phase out SROs and worked under the committee governance.
Cajias said the culture of punitive practices persists no matter if SROs are removed, as schools in the state and New Haven still have school security guards who check bags, look after students. disruptors and use metal detectors. SROs, on the other hand, are primarily responsible for referrals to court, according to Cajigas.
Charles Tyson, an SRO in New Haven, said that the SROs do not enforce any disciplinary rules other than breach of safety or serious juvenile offenses such as carrying dangerous weapons or “any flagrant act that puts in danger to faculty and students “.
Tyson also told the News that there is no formal training for ORS in addition to their police training. After being selected as SROs, they attend a week-long introductory course that covers safety protocols, emergency safety measures, and how to create a safe environment with faculty and students. He also said they attend workshops and seminars when possible, and that their training “is constantly evolving to adapt to current social trends.”
“We are and always have operated in schools with a philosophy of community policing,” Tyson said. “We are fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters and we oversee schools with the idea that students and teachers are an extension of our family. ”
Police impact on black and Latino students
The Community First Coalition focuses on how police in schools disproportionately impact black and Latin students and contribute to the school to prison pipeline. In Connecticut, there is big differences in the font between schools with predominantly white students and schools with large populations of black and Latin students, according to Iliana Pujols, director of policy at the CT Juvenile Justice Alliance.
Lucy Ruth, director of policy for Connecticut Voices for Children, told the News that the risk of dying at the hands of a police officer is 3.6 times higher for black residents than for white residents in the United States, according to the U.S. 2019 data.
“Our public safety enforcement system has the double problem of being deeply rooted in American racism and structured using human intuition rather than empirical best practices,” Ruth wrote in an email. to the News. “While many, if not most, police forces have updated their training methods and embarked on anti-bias training, these systemic issues turn out to be deeper than an updated curriculum. can solve. ”
Pujols said the presence of the police can be traumatic for many black and Latin students who may have previous negative experiences with the police.
In addition, the prevalence of police brutality recent years could lead to increased problems with current policing in schools, according to Barratt.
Cajigas attended high school in New Haven and recalled seeing ORS at school after the murder of Trayvon Martin.
“I remember seeing the murder of Trayvon Martin and then having to come to school or just feel this frustration and not feeling safe walking into the school building because there were police and even school security guards inside and inside the building, ”Cajigas mentioned. “I think it’s a constant re-traumatization that we submit to our students, especially our black and brown students.
Vision of the Coalition and roadblocks
The main vision of the coalition is to reinvent the treatment of chronically absent students or students with other disciplinary problems. Instead of calling the police, Barratt said a counselor should have a conversation with this student to understand the context of the situation. Pujols told the News that these counselors should also be credible messengers or people who closely resemble the school population to make sure students feel comfortable speaking with them.
Tyson told the News that although guidance counselors and social workers are present in New Haven schools, ORSs are sometimes asked to step in to mentor children “who may benefit from a positive role model.” He also told the News that BOE has a team of truancy officers who monitor attendance.
According to Barratt, it shouldn’t be a teacher’s responsibility to defuse situations or talk with students about potential reasons for their behavior. Instead, unconscious bias training for teachers should be implemented, she said.
“We have a host of anxious kids who are learning differently now,” Stubbs said. “Instead of having counselors there to help people get over their anxiety or their different learning styles, they have the police there to make them sit at school.”
According to Connecticut Judicial Branch, 152 New Haven students were referred to court by SROs during virtual learning last year.
Ruth also told the News that one of the main obstacles to suppressing ORS is the resistance of people to acknowledge the wrongs done by the police based on their own positive experiences.
Jennifer Hudson, director of external affairs at Connecticut Voices for Children, believes parents’ desire to keep ORS is especially strong in Connecticut due to the history of school shootings, but said police are often the ones that make students feel unsafe.
There are 44 New Haven public schools in the district.
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