Martin Austermuhle
Four D.C. lawmakers are pushing to reverse the council’s decision made over the last two years to gradually pull police officers out of the city’s public schools, rekindling a simmering debate that has only intensified with the spike in youth crime in the city.
The bill introduced Thursday by Councilmember Trayon White (D-Ward 8), Vincent Gray (D-Ward 7), Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), and Chairman Phil Mendelson would reinstate the Metropolitan Police Department’s School Safety Division, which houses the school resource officers that serve in schools across D.C.
Two years ago the council voted to slowly phase out the division, gradually removing officers from schools through 2025. Last year lawmakers voted on the issue again, pushing back on Mayor Muriel Bowser’s attempt to reverse the council’s plan. But she indicated earlier this year that she would continue to press the issue, especially after she heard from school leaders who said they wanted to keep their school resource officers in place.
The School Safety Division once had roughly 100 officers, but was reduced to 60 last year and it down to 40 officers now. By next year it will be down to 20, and by 2025 it will be eliminated altogether.
“School leaders want SROs and so do parents of schoolchildren,” tweeted Gray, who last week also introduced a bill that would offer retiring police officers a healthy bonus to stay on the force for another five years.
“Schools must be safe for students, teachers, and staff,” tweeted Pinto. “Alongside teachers, counselors, and mental health pros, trained & trauma-informed SROs are important members of school communities.”
The debate over police in schools has sparked nuanced and complicated emotions in jurisdictions across the country and in the Washington region. After the racial justice protests of 2020, both Alexandria and Montgomery County moved quickly to remove police from schools, but eventually backtracked in some form.
Proponents say that police can offer school leaders valuable intelligence on problems occuring outside the school doors, establish positive relationships with students, and better respond to problems that emerge than standard patrol officers could. But critics say that SROs can trigger or traumatize students who have had bad experiences with police outside of school, increase students’ contact with the criminal justice system, and fail to address more deeply rooted problems faced by kids.
“Reliance of policing for safety is simply ineffective, inefficient, and poor policymaking that ignores the root causes of violence in our communities,” tweeted the Black Swan Academy, a youth-focused organization that has advocated for pulling police out of schools.
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