Keep Cops out of Schools
Editorial by Sherrie Sorterup
I heard people want to know why anyone would want Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) out of Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS). We want School Resource Officers (SRO’s) removed from schools because SRO’s create additional problems instead of adding safety. I am a teacher in a high poverty school district and live in the Cincinnati Public School District. I do not claim the SRO’s in our schools are bad people; I explain how they do not meet the requirements for safety.
Let’s think about what people generally mean by school safety: no fights, no bullying, freedom to be authentically who you are, freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. Now let’s think about what makes someone fight, bully, feel they cannot authentically be themselves or feel they cannot make a mistake. When you want to yell at someone, punch someone, not participate in an activity with fidelity, hide your true self or all out destroy everything in sight it is generally because you experience: being disrespected, someone not listening to you, people not understanding you, the rest of your life being a mess, having food insecurity, not feeling well, not understanding what you’re being asked to do, feeling this activity isn’t important to you, being afraid people will think you’re stupid, being afraid you ARE stupid, getting no sleep at night, maybe clinical mental health problems for which you may or may not be receiving treatment or simply having a bad day. These are literally the causes of safety problems in schools.
Now let’s think of what would prevent these circumstances that cause unsafe behavior; these things that make you yell, punch, disrespect, give up, hide your true self or destroy everything in your path. Research reveals these preventions: being spoken to calmly and respectfully; giving you time to process what is happening and what you are being asked to do; receiving counseling; receiving food; receiving help with housing, jobs, and health services for your whole family; being allowed and even encouraged to be yourself; receiving extra help with concepts you find difficult; receiving information regarding possibilities for your future and being offered opportunities to express your frustration in a productive way.
Now we need to finish the equation: Do police officers give us any of these things that we just decided prevent unsafe schools? No, they do not. Counselors, Family Resource Centers, trained behavior specialists, small class sizes, well trained teachers and related arts classes do these things we require. Police only create a barrier to these goals by making students feel uneasy, viewed as criminals and misunderstood.
Your mind has likely moved on to the inevitable question of, “well, what are we supposed to do if there is a fight, bullying, theft or disrespectful interactions in our school?” There is a program called Restorative Justice that is much more effective at not only dealing with the current situation but with creating an atmosphere that produces fewer unsafe situations in the future. This is what we propose to implement.
No one is suggesting that schools should not have the authority to directly deal with someone in their school acting unsafely. We are explaining that police officers are not the proper tool to use.
Police do not make students feel safer. They make students feel judged, disrespected, negatively perceived and even unsafe, especially if they have seen police activity in their own lives and neighborhoods. I am talking about cause and prevention. Prevention should always be the goal. We should not be pretending that police officers prevent the causes of unsafe schools, and we know about all the occasions police also did not effectively respond to the incidents. People ask, “why are things getting so much worse?” I ask, “why do we keep doing the same things and expecting different results?” It isn’t working. We have evidence of what does work. Let’s work together to make our schools genuinely safe.