Three days into the new school year, on Aug. 18, a Los Angeles Unified teacher reportedly was struck in the face while attempting to break up a fight between two students at Cleveland High School.
Two weeks later, the Los Angeles School Police Department reported that staff at Taft High School had recovered 22 Xanax pills and a four-inch blade from a student following a fight.
And earlier this month, a 17-year-old student was shot in the leg during a fight outside the Santee Education Complex.
Since the start of the school year, when most students returned to in-person learning — many for the first time in a year-and-a-half because of the coronavirus pandemic — officers from the Los Angeles School Police Department say anecdotally they’ve seen an uptick in campus violence.
They want the school board to not only restore funding cuts made to their department, but to allow police presence on campuses once more.
The board had voted in June 2020 to slash $25 million from its police department, or about 35% of the LASPD’s budget, which resulted in the loss of 133 positions. The board at the time also ordered officers to be removed from middle and high school campuses until the district had heard from a task force concerning the best use of school police. Several months later, the board decided, as part of a larger action item related to school culture, climate and safety, that schools could not request to bring an officer back onto campus.
School board President Kelly Gonez, who had supported both the budget cuts and the removal of officers from campuses, said in an email that the board had heard “loud and clear” from students that having officers onsite do more harm than good and that she stands by her decision “to prioritize students’ voices.”
“Our schools continue to have school police officers as a resource just minutes away, as they patrol our schools,” she wrote. “While there have been isolated incidents of concern, I haven’t seen credible evidence that having an officer stationed on campus would have changed the outcome. LA School Police continues to respond to incidents as they arise.”
This week, two board members who never supported moving officers off campus proposed allowing principals and individual schools to decide if they want a police presence at their site.
While the majority of the board rejected the proposal, the debate about the value of school police is far from over.
Recent shooting should be ‘wakeup call,’ police union says
Hours after the Sept. 2 nonfatal shooting outside the Santee Education Complex, the unions representing members of the LASPD force issued stern rebukes of the district’s school board for their decisions over the past year-and-a-half. The cuts and removal of officers off campuses were spurred by demands from student and community activists to defund police departments during the Black Lives Matter movement that swept the nation following the killing of George Floyd.
The Los Angeles School Police Management Association, which represents the department’s police lieutenants and sergeants, called the board’s actions “major contributing factor(s) to the escalating violence we have seen in the opening weeks of school.”
“LAUSD cannot continue on this trajectory and today’s tragic incident should serve as a wakeup call,” the union said.
The Los Angeles School Police Association, which represents rank-and-file officers, was equally critical of the school board, insisting that elected officials must “stop playing ‘political games’ with our children’s safety.”
Meanwhile, certain community advocacy groups continue to call for an all-out elimination of LASPD. Some students, particularly Black and Hispanic youths, say they feel targeted by cops, and that the presence of officers on campuses makes school less inviting.
The local teachers union has also advocated for the removal of officers from campuses, putting it at odds with some of the district’s other employee groups that represent certain clerical workers and administrators.
Officers fear tragedy will strike
As the future of the LASPD plays out in public debate, officers within the department say they’re worried it will only be a matter of time before a mass school shooting or similar tragedy strikes.
“I am not only convinced; I am terrified that we are very ill prepared,” said Lt. Rob Taylor, president of the Los Angeles School Police Management Association. “Coronavirus has caused more depression. I think we have more kids who are depressed, more kids who are suicidal. I think we have more kids in a place where they’re not only willing to harm themselves, they’re willing to harm others.”
Previously, school officers stationed on campuses could respond almost immediately to an incident, be it a fight between students, someone inflicting self-harm, an outside intruder or other threat.
But officers say the response time has gotten longer since they’re no longer on campus.
A spokesperson for the LASPD said shortly after the Santee shooting that the department is committed to doing its best to provide safety.
“It’s challenging to have resources removed from us, and it’s hard to do the job when you don’t have resources as we did a year-and-a-half ago,” the spokesperson said. “But we will continue to provide safety as best as we can with what we have.”
George McKenna and Scott Schmerelson, the only current school board members to have served as principals, voted against the cuts and opposed removing officers from campuses.
McKenna, who had gotten injured on many occasions while breaking up fights between students, said in an interview earlier this year that he was grateful to have a school officer around when an incident broke out.
“They’re there to protect the students from outside intrusion, influence and things that go on,” he added. “Their role is to become acquainted with the students so that they can become preventers and interveners in crimes.”
Some students feel less safe around cops
To be sure, there are those who welcome cops on campus. But that’s not the case for everyone.
A survey commissioned by the district, conducted last fall, found a majority of students, parents and district employees across demographic subgroups found that school police make campuses safe. This included 51% of all students, 64% of parents and 59% of staff.
Among Latinos, 54% of students and 67% of parents said they felt having an officer on campus made the school safe, as did 50% of Black parents. But just 35% of Black students felt that way, the survey found.
Students who want the school police department abolished say they feel criminalized when officers are on campus. That, in turn, makes it difficult to feel safe and to concentrate on school work, they say.
Recent Dorsey High School graduate Sarah Djato recalled an incident in September 2019, during which, she said, a school officer used pepper spray in response to a fight involving mainly Black students.
Incidents like this is why the 17-year-old had advocated for the LASPD to be disbanded. Prior attempts at reforming police departments haven’t stopped students of color from feeling harassed, she said.
“‘Reform’ has happened in the past with body cam, with racial bias training,” Djato said. “That hasn’t stopped what police have done, which is ultimately hurting Black students and Brown students.”
Teacher Jennifer Villaryo told the school board in May that the LASPD should be defunded and the money reinvested in more counseling and other support services for students.
Once, she said, a student acted out in class, so she reached out to the school psychologist. It turned out the student had witnessed a neighbor being shot the night before, and officers had invaded the home next door, she said.
“Had I called the police, I would’ve further traumatized that student,” Villaryo said. “But luckily our school had … a psychologist there who could help that student. That should be the case on every school campus. We shouldn’t be referring to the police when a child is in the middle of a traumatic experience or dealing with trauma.”
LASPD once recognized for program
Yet for all those calling to get rid of school police, there are those who like knowing trained officers are nearby.
Debra Jelin, the principal at Mount Lukens High School, considers school officers a member of the campus team and insists they do much more than make arrests.
She recounted one incident during which a student had lost his father to a gang shooting, and the school officer took on the role of mentor. In time, the boy’s mother and the officer exchanged phone numbers as a bond developed between the officer and student, and the officer remained a presence in that child’s life.
“I don’t believe it makes sense to create this image that law enforcement is our enemy when they’re part of our community,” Jelin said.
The Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, which represents principals and other LAUSD administrators and supervisors, found in an internal poll that about 98% of its members favored giving schools the option of having an officer on campus, according to association President Nery X. Paiz.
The head of the local chapter of the California School Employees Association, which represents clerical and office staff, has also spoken out in support of school police.
Some supporters of the LASPD consider the department a leader when it comes to school policing.
The department was recognized with a Model Agency Award by the National Association of School Resource Officers in 2014. The year prior, the department had launched restorative justice and diversion programs, which, according to Sgt. Rudy Perez, is now used by other local law enforcement agencies.
The LASPD was also the first school police department in the nation to launch a mental health evaluation team, in which an officer is paired with a school counselor or other mental health clinician to respond to an incident involving a student, staff member or parent, Perez said.
School police officers, unlike regular officers who work for a municipal police department, undergo extra training on dealing with youth issues and, Perez said, train with a special-education teacher to better understand how to respond to special-needs children.
Looking at alternative solutions to school police
Tanya Ortiz Franklin wasn’t yet in office when the school board voted to slash $25 million from the LASPD budget. But the newest board member said she supports the cuts and, in fact, would like to see the district get as close to police-free schools as possible.
The district and board need to be more clear about when officers really should be called, she said. For example, she said, officers in the past may have been called to help supervise events such as dances or graduation ceremonies when, in her opinion, other adults on campus could fill those roles or handle other issues.
“In schools, when I think about bringing people to justice, I think about restorative justice,” she said. “There are many adults who can help students learn healthy behaviors and resolving conflicts and addressing harm.”
With officers removed from campuses, the district has brought in school climate coaches — unarmed adults from the community whose mission is to de-escalate tense situations, promote student engagement and help elevate student voices. According to the LASPD police unions, the climate coaches have been instructed not to lay a hand on students, even if a fight breaks out.
Mau Trejo, an organizer with Students Deserve, one of the groups leading the campaign to defund the LASPD, said despite recent reports of fights and shootings at or near campuses, “we still continue to firmly believe that school police should be fully defunded and officers should not be allowed back on campus.”
More resources should be set aside for services that get to the root of what may be causing some students to act out, he said.
“The reason these incidents happen is the lack of interventions to address their mental health, or addressing their issues with other students,” Trejo said. “We need to continue to invest in those alternatives and not in police.”
Gonez, the board president, said the district is working to fill all staffing positions the board committed to in its Black Student Achievement Plan and COVID-19 relief plans to support students academically and emotionally. In the meantime, school safety remains the responsibility of all adults on campus, she said.
“A trusted teacher or counselor who has built a relationship with a student can help to prevent incidents before they occur,” she stated, adding that school police will continue to support schools when incidents arise.
The debate continues
Erroll Southers, the director of the Safe Communities Institute at the University of Southern California, recalls when, as a Black kid growing up in New Jersey, he was stopped by officers while walking on the street because of his race on multiple occasions. He believes a school resource officer isn’t the answer to every issue that arises on a campus, and that it will be incumbent on the school board to strike the right balance between providing social workers, counselors, school police and other resources to students.
The former Santa Monica police officer, who had started a Police Activities League while with that city’s police department, declined to say whether the LAUSD board was right to move officers off campus or to cut the school police department’s budget.
But Southers doesn’t believe abolishing police departments — as some Black Lives Matter advocates have called for — would be the solution. He supports reform, but for that to happen, there needs to be opportunities for students to form positive relationships with school officers, he said. That way, those youths might enter law enforcement themselves when they grow up, he said.
It’s disappointing, Southers said, when “the only contact that Black and Brown kids might have with an officer is during a time of crisis or conflict. If that is the only environment that they ever see them in, there’s only one predictable outcome.”
“The culture (in a police department) only changes if we change the people that are part of it,” he added. “When young progressives become part of law enforcement, it changes. It has to. I would love to see the young progressives that want to see a change become part of it.”
Terry Allen, who conducted research on mass incarceration for a project known as Million Dollar Hoods while a graduate student at UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies, does not entirely dismiss the role of school police, but he doesn’t believe they should be on campuses.
His research included a review of the LASPD between 2014 and 2017. Researchers concluded that Black students accounted for 25% of arrests, citations and diversions made by the LASPD during this period, though they represented less than 9% of LAUSD’s student population.
Allen, who is Black and grew up in a neighborhood he described as high-poverty and over-policed, said that based on interviews with 120 Black LAUSD students, he found that the mere presence of an officer often triggered emotions or anxiety for the youths.
Allen said he recognizes that the LASPD has put on community events and afterschool programs to build relationships with students. The difference, he said, is that in those instances, students can choose whether to participate and interact with police. The multiplicity of their roles as mentors as well as enforcers of rules can also be confusing, he said.
He believes the department should be defunded and that the solution to school safety should start with asking the local community what they need to feel safe.
“Not the entire police (department) is bad,” Allen said. “But to me, abolishing it is abolishing the punitive structure … that perpetuates racial disparities.”
How the LASPD’s future will play out remains unknown.
Students Deserve has said it will press on with calling for the LASPD to be shut down. At the same time, the board members who sought to leave it up to schools to decide if they want an officer on campus could bring back their proposal next year — though they’ve been on the losing end of most board actions related to school police.
In the meantime, Taylor, of the Los Angeles School Police Management Association, said officers feel vilified and that morale within the department is down.
“We’re trying to do our jobs,” he said, “but it’s very difficult when you’re being beat up mentally.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to clarify that students, parents and district staff were asked in a survey if they felt that school police made their campuses safe.
