Inside the decade-long movement to defund police in schools
In the midst of the 1980s war on drugs and in the wake of devastating mass school shootings throughout the country, bolstering school police in Los Angeles was seen as a safety imperative by many educators and parents.
But for the last decade, a number of student advocacy groups have pushed the school board to reduce police presence in their schools, saying Black and Latino children are targeted for discipline more than others.
The Los Angeles School Police Department now employs about 470 officers and civilians, including placement of an armed and uniformed officer at every high school. In a highly publicized turn last week, the leadership of the Los Angeles teachers union voted to support the elimination of the $70-million school police budget.
The union’s public announcement on the steps of City Hall — compelled by two weeks of protests and outrage over police brutality against Black people and the killing of George Floyd — has increased the urgency of the debate within the nation’s second-largest school district. The union leadership joins a number of community-based organizations who say the $70-million school police budget should be used to hire more counselors and build restorative justice programs.
“This moment is different because if you all remember a couple weeks ago, people acted like ... the call to defund police was a radical call,” said Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah, a Cal State Los Angeles professor of Pan-African Studies and an L.A. Unified parent. “We’re at a moment when all of a sudden, our most radical imaginings are possible. We can end the system of policing as we know it. We can defund the police. And we have to begin with our children.”
The Los Angeles schools movement comes as school districts and universities throughout the country have joined city debates over defunding or reorganizing police departments.
Ultimately it’s up to the school board, which authorizes police spending, to decide whether to take action — two of seven school board members said they did not support the move, one said the issue should be discussed during budget deliberations CONTINUE READING: Inside the case for defunding police in schools - Los Angeles Times
