Policing in NYC High Schools
Ancillary 10
In my paper, I will be exploring the issue of policing specifically in high schools in New York City and how this inadvertently fuels the school to prison pipeline and directly targets BIPOC youth and adolescents. Rather than preventing crime, school police officers have been linked with increased arrests for noncriminal, youthful behavior that has long lasting implications on teenagers and specifically targeted minorities and this issue is prevalent within public high schools within the 5 boroughs of New York. In this paper I want to discuss that instead of policing in schools which leads to criminalization at a young age, there should rather be funding of educational programs, support services, and mental health resources so that these schools that require police officers can instead be on the same standards as their wealthier counterparts and offer educational, physical, mental and emotional support for their students.
So far I’ve researched my local issue, its history and the impacts of it in New York City and why this is such a pressing matter that is so detrimental if not dealt with:
History of the Issue — The overarching issue of policing in secondary schools primarily began in Flint, Michigan in 1953 in response to teachers concerns’ to dealing with issues of “overcrowding” and a community strategy to respond to segregation; however it has always been racially motivated and continues to be that way today once it was replicated in cities across the U.S. Policing in high schools is mainly found in inner city public high schools in large metropolises like Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, D.C., Boston, and my very own home New York City.
Within NYC, policing in high schools started in response to the narrative that officials had on youth of color which shows the origins of this policy and why its specifically set up to target youth of color and how it fuels the school to prison pipeline. In 1957, as Vox writer Kristin Henning describes, “representatives from the NYC Police Department described Black and Latinx students in low-income neighborhoods as “dangerous delinquents” and “undesirables” capable of “corroding school morale.” This narrative was the motivating factor on decisions that were made down the line to establish these “safety agents” essentially police in schools, which proves to be extremely problematic and detrimental.
In addition to this narrative, around that same time leading up to the 1960s there was a highly publicized violent incident in a Brooklyn high school that sparked concerns over youth behavior and student safety in the educational setting. In response to this, a committee was created that provided the solution of stationing police officers in schools for the purpose of policing students and from then on police have been stationed in schools at alarming rates across the NYC metropolitan area with numbers declining over the years but still currently about 3,200 school agents are stationed in NYC high schools as of October 2021 (which is an improvement but there’s still a lot of work to be done). For a policing policy that began as a “safety policy’’ with this narrative this clearly depicts the problematic nature of the roots of this policy and the ongoing need for it to be demolished.
Current Issue — Money that should be used to fund educational and emotional supportive services for youth in high schools is being misused to keep police in high schools which creates a hostile and demoralizing environment for youth that are already at risk for having emotional issues-since these police are usually found and stationed in high schools in low income areas with the mean income of students’ families are generally very low. The Children’s Defense Fund NY describes the budget allocated to policing in NYC public schools, “What was a $1.5 million budget request in 1968 (the equivalent of a little over $11 million in 2019) is now a $431 million annual expenditure for school policing. The most recent city budget for police in schools is, not surprisingly, the highest it has ever been and a startling response to growing evidence demonstrating how problematic current school policing is as a safety strategy.” Specifically what I want to focus on is how this budget is exactly distributed and what schools are receiving this funding for school policing — schools that are in low income neighborhoods with the majority of the schools being made up of BIPOC youth. I want to stress again that the funding of these police officers create hostile environments for these BIPOC youth and aggravate and demoralize them even more. These youth in low income neighborhoods can already be facing various emotional issues due to economic hardships, or familial issues that are connected to being low income, so having policing in environments which should be safe and enriching spaces and escapes from their homes is extremely problematic and detrimental to their futures’ and educational paths.
Future of the Issue — There have been calls to abolish police or “safety officers” within high schools in the NYC metropolitan area and replace them instead with funding for support services for these youth, rightfully so. As Alex Zimmerman describes, “The most controversial of the NYC Council bills would enshrine in city law a promise Mayor Bill de Blasio made last summer to transfer oversight of school police officers from the police department to the education department by June 2022. It also would bar school police from making arrests, using handcuffs, wearing their uniforms on school grounds, and would also require retraining to focus on “de-escalation” and “restorative justice” techniques.” This in theory would work, but without a strict framework it might be loosely executed and this issue is one that is time sensitive and needs to not only be addressed but also reversed and offered viable solutions and alternatives to reverse the damage that has already been done. In my paper I would like to focus on this solution that is being presented and how it can work and be implemented.
