Violences at schools:police

Editorial

The Police and the Schools

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School officials across the country are revisiting “zero-tolerance” disciplinary policies under which children are sometimes arrested for profanity, talking back to teachers or adolescent behavior that once would have been resolved in meetings with parents. The reappraisals are all to the good given that those who get suspended or arrested are more likely to drop out and become entangled in the criminal justice system permanently.
The New York City Council clearly had this link in mind when it passed a new law earlier this week that will bring long overdue transparency to the school disciplinary process. Under the Student Safety Act, which takes effect in 90 days, the New York Police Department’s school security division will be required to provide clear and comprehensive data that show how many students are arrested or issued summonses at school and why. School officials will also have to provide similarly detailed information on suspensions.
The Council turned its attention to this problem in 2007 when the New York Civil Liberties Union published an alarming report charging that schoolchildren were being belittled, roughed up, sexually harassed and sometimes arrested by police and school security officers for noncriminal violations of school rules. The report further asserted that this treatment was disproportionately meted out in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. At the time, ineffective data collection made it difficult to determine exactly what was happening where.
The new law changes that by requiring the police department to furnish quarterly reports on arrests or summonses associated with noncriminal offenses like trespassing, disorderly conduct and loitering. The data will have to be broken down by race, age and grade level.
The report also must say whether the students were disabled or English-language learners. Most important, people who wish to lodge complaints about school police or the security officers they supervise can call the 311 help line and be transferred to the police department’s internal affairs division.
The new law represents a good first step. But the Council will need to ride herd on the police department, which has a history of ignoring data-reporting requirements. Beyond that, the Council needs to make sure that problems that should be dealt with at school are handled there and not at the precinct station.