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Misusing School Resource Officers
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There is no reason that police officers assigned to schools should be used by school administrators and teachers to enforce code of conduct rules on the school campus. Assaults are a different matter as is trespass by non-students. Parents and their children that cannot behave should be told that they are to leave the campus by a school administrator, not by a police officer.
Refusal to leave the campus that results in a criminal trespass charge should require an administrator to agree to prosecute, a signed written statement, not verbal, as well as a written agreement that the school district will expel the student if a police officer has to physically remove an individual from the campus.
Administrative laws or rules are not the same as statutes passed by a state legislature concerning offenses – violations and crimes. Police officers on a campus if necessary should concentrate on protecting the premises, and students and staff from outside threats. They should not be used to enforce discipline by teachers, or staff that are unable, or unwilling to provide a disciplined school environment.
From Second City Cop:
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday renewed her threat to remove police officers from public schools on the heels of a blistering audit that accused the Chicago Police Department of continuing to operate the program without oversight and training.
Lightfoot’s transition report recommends “encouraging Chicago Public Schools to work with individual schools to define the mission, goal and scope” of school resource officers and tailor that role “to the needs of each school’s student body.”
But months after a confrontation between police officers and a student at Marshall High School, Lightfoot hinted again Thursday that the days of having Chicago police officers stationed inside Chicago Public Schools may end on her watch.
We’ve been advocating to get out of schools for at least a few years now. Even McCarthy toyed with the idea. But we don’t think Lori has the [redacted] to do it, especially after twenty-eight parents and students went to jail the other day.
I’m not sure what the “mission, goal, and scope” and “to the needs of each school’s student body” means other than it’s admin speak. I do agree with Second City Cop that it’s time for the Chicago Police Department to pull out of Chicago schools and place the discipline responsibility on school administrators where it belongs.
Published in Education 
If any school district in America has a higher than normal chance of a student bringing a firearm to school with an intent to use it, it would be Chicago. I’m not sure if pulling officers out is a good idea.
But, if the point is that the CPD should have strict guidelines as to the role of their officers while in the schools, that I would agree to. Preventing physical assault on occupants of the building seems like a reasonable goal.
I guess you can pull cops out, but isn’t the real answer to pull your kids out? The government schooling system is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. Shouldn’t we instead be trying to persuade conservatives (or anyone for that matter) to remove their children from government schools? I know people are used to their 2-parent incomes and whatnot, but is subjecting your children to indoctrination day camp really worth the extra money?
Any policy on school resource officers has to require input from both Chicago PD officers, and school administrators. The policy has to be consistent regardless of which school CPD officers are assigned to patrol. One school cannot operate on guidelines that do not apply to another school.
Teachers have to step up and do their jobs, and sometimes the job is doing more than teaching. It means maintaining discipline and leadership. If you can’t do those things, you’re probably in the wrong job. Don’t expect police officers to do your job for you. Good post, Doug.
It’s a proven organizational principle that once any measure of authority has been introduced into an unequal power relationship, it is difficult to withdraw without disorder ensuing.
Leaders of undisciplined or immature individuals know that once they give an order on a topic then they own that topic. They must continually supervise it. Similarly, once uniformed police take a place in a school and begin to enforce discipline, they become essential to maintaining good conduct even in ways they weren’t essential before. Unruly children won’t obey the administrators or teachers because they’re less intimidating than cops, and the adults won’t accept the burden.
I don’t know the situation, but it seems to me that cops were placed in Chicago schools for a reason. Maybe that was a necessary decision and maybe not, but I’m sure that the chaos would elevate if they were withdrawn. Have the objective conditions that prompted their introduction to the schools been remedied? Of course not.
They can’t. Thanks to the Obama administrations Justice Department. Schools were held to a microscope to see if there was “disparate impact” on minority students. Since particularly in most large cities the problem students are likely to be minority the schools and teachers hands are essentially tied. The result has been a complete collapse of any semblance of order and discipline in the classrooms. I pity the kids who are there to learn when the schools are held hostage to the trouble makers. Assaults on students and teachers are skyrocketing.
Just google teacher assaulted by students.
The Chicago teachers union hates the police. Several officers were seriously injured trying to restrain a female student recently . Here’s the story from Second City Cop
The charges against the student were dropped by the DA ( the same one who dropped the charges against Jussie Smollett)
The police are in trouble for having to tase the girl after 2 of them were seriously injured by her. A multi million dollar law suit against the city is pending, and based on past history the city will settle. The Chicago Teachers Union, as Progressive as they come have called for all police to be removed from the schools and the rank and file police, sick of the entire situation can’t wait for that to happen.
If police are there it should be to deal with actual crimes and prevention. General discipline should be the job of the principal. Although, what can a principal do anymore? In many cases calling the parents won’t get any results and it seems like no one ever gets expelled anymore.
I’m not so sure about this.
A cop’s a cop wherever he is, and his job is to address crime. The phrase ‘resource officer’ suggests that he is a tool of the micro-state of the school. A totem used to scare and intimidate.
This is debasing and corrupting; law dogs are not lap dogs. This kind of program cannot be ended soon enough.
This from a recent Daily Caller article: “Universities funded by the Department of Education to help shape the way U.S. K-12 schools and colleges portray the Middle East and Israel…”
And no, I agree – using our police force to support any system of indoctrination is not acceptable.
My youngest son was removed from the public school system. My grandkids, because of the indoctrination issue, have been/are being educated outside the public school system.
For many years now the difference between a want and a need have been confused. And priorities in the home twisted all out of shape.
It seems Chicago, and they are not alone, are attempting to use the Police force to establish a police state, and to prop up a failed system I would like to see just go away.
Don’t blame Obama for this one. He might have contributed, but I know destructive policies were well in place 50 years ago (as I think about it, even more) where teachers were disciplined for maintaining classroom discipline.
The Obama admin weaponized the issue.
The directive, cast as a “guidance,” in fact formalized a fundamental shift in the Department of Education’s approach to civil rights enforcement. Prior to the Dear Colleague Letter, the standard held that civil rights are violated if students are treated differently because of race; for instance, if a black student and a white student both curse at a teacher, it’s wrong to suspend the black student and give the white student a warning. The Dear Colleague Letter expanded the standard from disparate treatment to disparate impact; now, if two black students and one white student curse at a teacher, it could be a civil rights violation to punish them all equally.
Teachers aren’t allowed to touch kids, even if they’re trying to protect them. Under the Obama administration, he took away teacher’s abilities to discipline kids. My husband lost his teaching career of 18 years for trying to discipline his kids. The worst part is, that it was other teachers who reported him.
Not only that, the district forced him to resign, without a proper investigation. He’s not allowed to talk to any witnesses or defend himself in any way. He has a union lawyer that doesn’t take care of him.
Because his records say that he quit on his own, we don’t qualify for unemployment. There is a permanent mark on his record, sabotaging any teaching jobs in the future. As of right now, he can’t teach in the state of Utah.
My husband had the nickname of Mr. Rogers because that’s the kind of man he is. He is the last person you’d think of being fired as a teacher. He taught kindergarten through second grade. He loves children. He still gets stopped in the store and other places, by kids he used to teach. He was a requested teacher.
This has been our lives for the last six months, but it started long before that. The parents didn’t want my husband fired. We are fighting to get his job back, but it feels like that door is closing.
When my 45 y.o. son was in elementary school his teachers in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD (Texas) were’t allowed to discipline. They had to have some administrator administrate the correction, which elevated what I thought should be minor offences a teacher should be able to handle with “put your nose in the circle” to an office visit and a time out or more.
But you know what? If I was that teacher in the video @kozak posted and that was the expected teacher response to such incredible behavior, I would have been out the door and job hunting. Those animals ought not be in a school, they need to be in a cage at the zoo.
They’ll be caged sooner or later.