Firepower failing school test

Police are increasingly taking a disciplinary role in US schools, one once filled by teachers. Photo / AP

When police employed by the Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District in Brownsville, Texas, took a 3am burglary call at a local campus last year they rolled out their SWAT team.

"We have to be prepared for anything," police chief Ricardo Perez told the local ABC TV affiliate.

"We have to be prepared for any threat that comes to the school."

Perez's SWAT team was equipped by the 1033 Programme, a Defence Department scheme to jettison surplus equipment. Most goes to police departments.

But M-16 assault rifles, sidearms, grenade launchers, even mine-resistant, ambush-proof [MRAP] armoured vehicles, have been snapped up by school districts, inflaming a debate that militarising campus police will reinforce punitive attitudes to discipline and harm students.

Last week, Texas Appleseed, which provides pro bono legal aid, along with Public Counsel, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Juvenile Justice Network and other advocacy organisations, wrote to Mark Harnitcheck, who heads the Defence Logistics Agency's 1033 Programme. The letter said 10 Texas school districts alone had received an arsenal of 64 M-16s, 18 M-14 rifles, 25 automatic pistols and 4500 rounds of ammunition, plus tactical vests, armoured plating and military vehicles.

The signatories said the 1033 scheme stoked an "increasingly hostile" climate that "can only exacerbate existing tensions, intensifying overly punitive atmospheres that criminalise and stigmatise students of colour".

The rapid expansion of school policing dates from the 1990s when America's crack cocaine epidemic spawned fears of gangs and "super predators" - children who had grown up on the nation's meanest streets.

This dark scenario triggered a punitive "tough-on-crime" response, even though the much-hyped crime wave never happened. Juvenile arrest rates fell 55 per cent between 1994 and 2010, according to Justice Department records.

But lawmakers, police and schools all swallowed the Kool-Aid. The 1999 Columbine school massacre, where two students killed 12 others, and the 2012 Sandy Hook Massacre, where a gunman killed 20 children and six staff, inflamed public school safety fears and fanned calls to arm police, a cry taken up by firearms lobby the National Rifle Association.

Today armed officers routinely patrol many school campuses. Ostensibly there to provide security they have become increasingly involved in discipline, a slippery slope with, say critics, adverse effects for pupils.

"When you've got a hammer everything looks like a nail," says Brennan Griffin, Texas Appleseed's development director. "You use it on things even if it is not the right tool. That's what we've seen with school policing."

While school shootings are tragic they are rare, says Griffin, who thinks police should focus on safety and step back from disciplining pupils.

Instead, many issue citations for minor infractions: being late, truancy, smoking, swearing, talking back to teachers, disrupting class, fighting and other unruly behaviour.

Miscreants face arrest on "Class C misdemeanour" charges, resulting in court appearances, fines, community service, even jail.

The evolution of using police to discipline students is a national phenomenon, says Susan Ferriss, a reporter with the Centre for Public Integrity. She cites the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) - America's second largest with 640,000 pupils and a US$59 million ($74 million) police budget for 405 officers - where police ran sting operations targeting tardy kids who violated a curfew against being on city streets in school hours.

"Sometimes it would escalate. Police would search back packs and ticket kids for having a magic marker [useful for graffiti]. Or having paraphernalia used for smoking pot. Or even having cigarettes."

In 2012 the CPI found LA school police issued 33,500 citations over three years for youths aged 10 to 18, with 40 per cent going to those 14 or younger. Blacks and Latinos were disproportionally cited, even as juvenile court judges warned such tactics heightened the risk kids would drop out (even one arrest can double this prospect) and get into worse trouble.

Amid fears that such heavy-handed tactics violated civil rights, the Education Department's Civil Rights Data Base found black pupils were three-and-a-half times more likely than whites to be stood down. In Compton, at the heart of LA's South Central district, a tough gang area where school police are equipped with AR-15 assault rifles, a federal complaint alleged police used racial profiling to target Latino students.

Critics say such coercive tactics spawn a "school-to-prison pipeline". An arrest record may limit hopes of a US college loan or military service.

A Texas Appleseed 2010 report, "Ticketing, Arrest and Use of Force in Schools," found a "paradigm shift" in school discipline since the 1990s.

"The misdeeds of children, acts that in the near recent past resulted in trips to the principal's office, corporal punishment, or extra laps under the supervision of a middle school or high school coach, now result in criminal prosecution, criminal records and untold millions of dollars in punitive fines and hefty court costs being imposed on children ages 10 to 16."

The report said at least "275,000 non-traffic tickets are issued to juveniles in Texas each year", most for school misbehaviour, with children as young as 6 ticketed.

It found school policing was the fastest area of law enforcement growth in Texas, with Tasers, pepper spray and dogs - coercion usually associated with street crime - sometimes used against kids.

Supporters say undisciplined children disrupt classrooms. Using police to eject them allows teachers to focus on other pupils. While it is hard to argue any teacher should risk harm from, say, breaking up a fight between larger pupils, there is also criticism schools have shifted responsibility for discipline from staff to police, who rely on force and are less accountable to parents.

"School police seldom have extra training for dealing with schoolkids, whose needs are substantially different from policing an adult population," says Griffen. Instead of added firepower police need training on de-escalating violence or coping with pupils with mental disabilities.

In January the Obama Administration unveiled guidelines to steer schools away from "zero tolerance" discipline. Any minor violation of school rules "should land a student in the principal's office, not in a police precinct", said Attorney-General Eric Holder, who announced his resignation this week. Schools must distinguish between infractions, disciplined by staff, and threats to safety, handled by police.

The move was hailed by the ACLU as "ground-breaking" and reflects growing concern school police have repeatedly over-reacted, pepper-spraying or Tasering black or Latino students for, as the Texas Appleseed letter noted, "taking an aggressive stance" or "clinching their fists". Last month, the Community Rights Campaign and Public Counsel forced LAUSD police to back off on minor incidents, with most fights to be settled by off-campus reconciliation.

Such advocacy has led to a steep decline in citations: from 11,698 in 2009-10, to 3499 in 2012-13. But LA's school police still made almost 1100 arrests, 94.5 per cent involving "students of colour," in 2013. Meanwhile, the school police chief says his force will return the grenade launchers but keep 61 M-16s (converted to semi-automatic) and its MRAP to rescue kids in case of any "large-scale attack".