SWOPblogger

SWOP along with numerous other community based groups have long argued that armed police officers mingling among our students during school hours is a bad idea. We firmly believe this and have maintained our clarity on what we consider a core youth rights issue without expanding our observations to the pros and cons of establishing an actual police department in general. But now it seems we are at that point. So let’s talk about police and criminal justice, racial profiling and guns.

Guns are lethal weapons. As we all surely know, guns riddle our society…they are literally everywhere. One of the officers who gave public comment at the APS meeting last night commented that they have a room full of confiscated weapons collected from APS campuses. We say GOOD FOR YOU. You obviously were able to confiscate, and maybe even de-escalate a bad situation, without using guns. When we consider the scenario he described, it begs an obvious question: had police officers been armed in those situations, would they have been more likely to use their weapons? And, given that racial profiling is a social reality would they have been more likely to use their weapons against youth of color?

Racial profiling is a social reality and to argue that it isn’t is to turn a blind eye to the incredible over-representation of men of color in the criminal justice system.

The fact that the United States, the “land of the free,” with our vaunted social prosperity, has the largest prison population in the world should be considered a crisis. While only making up 5% of the worlds’ population, we account for 25% of those behind bars worldwide. If we have a healthy and inherently good system, as so many of us believe, we should be viewing what we have collectively allowed to happen as a cancer.

It is most certainly a cancer for communities of color, let’s make no mistake. According to Glenn Loury's excellent article on this topic in this month's Boston Review, while three out of 200 young whites were incarcerated in 2000, the rate for young blacks was one in nine. There is no disputing the enormous amount of evidence we have that our criminal justice system stigmatizes by race. The criminalization of large sectors of minority populations in this country maintains racial hierarchies and perpetuates the life of poverty statistically so much more prevalent in brown and black communities.

And the entrance of people of color into the criminal justice system begins at a young age, sometimes as early as junior high.

When a police officer enters a person’s identification into their computer system, that person has entered the criminal justice system. That person has psychologically registered that they are suspected of being a criminal. This has profound impacts on the very young who are still developing their sense of themselves and what their life opportunities will be. And, this simple act also brands that young person in the eyes of the community as well as the broader police force, as someone that is “suspicious,” creating a shift in perception and in many people a forgone conclusion. This is just one example of how insidious policing can be to vulnerable communities.

We need to break the punitive chain that has spiraled out of control in this country. We certainly do not believe we should add to it by integrating a police department with our school system. Our campuses should be havens that young people can have an expectation of going to without being criminally targeted on the basis of subjective suspicion.

For us, the “guns in school” issue is essentially about this larger social issue. In the past, the issue was whether or not APS security officers should carry guns on their persons. This community worked hard to address this question a few years back, and the outcome was a compromise…security officers would have lethal weapons in their trunks and would be allowed to carry them on their persons after hours. We know that we are perceived as oppositional to the police force. But let’s be clear: while we know our society depends upon police and we want them to be able to do their jobs safely, we also think the police force itself needs to be controlled through rules, regulations, and oversight, just as we do our military. We do not think any institution is inherently able to police itself, including the police. And in this case, we believe that guns add fuel to the fire of what is already an environment fraught with danger for young people, coming at them from both their peer sets and from the very society that ought to have the best interests of all young people at heart, regardless of their cultural norms, ethnicity or class. Sadly, we can’t make the statement that all young people are treated equally in the United States.

After a motion was made by one of the Board members last night to keep the current system of security officers in place rather than create an APS police department, the Board heard public comment, during which they finally heard from community members that guns in school are a bad idea. To his credit, Board member Marty Esquivel quickly asked a very pertinent
question …was the motion to not create a Police Department really about not having guns in school? If so, he said, we should call it what it is and address that, but not trash the idea of a department because of that issue. We agree, actually. Since early summer we’ve been asking that question, but from the converse: is the effort to create a Police Department really about fully arming officers at all times without having to bring it up, essentially undermining the lengthy community debate and outcome which created the current APS policy concerning guns?

Marty Esquivel did not vote with us last night, in fact he said he thought that the efforts of a volunteer study commission should be validated by the wholesale adoption of their recommendations. I was confused by his position given the unrepresentative nature of the commission, not to mention how he comes across, which is as someone willing to ask detailed and pertinent, even if hard, questions. And I would also like to point out that in the run up to his election in March, he unequivocally stated that he would not support armed police in schools. Here is the exact Q&A printed in the Tribune during his campaign:

Q: Would you vote to arm school police 24/7?

“No. We need to proactively identify threats to our schools with better, smarter security.”

This is, of course, our position here at SWOP. And we were pleased when a candidate who shared our views won an election.

We understand that perspectives change, but we also hope politicians know that people really do seek to understand the positions of candidates in order to make informed choices about who they elect. In this particular case, we would like to see more clarity and we would also like to see the inclusion of a more diverse set of constituents when studying and making recommendations on these sorts of tough topics. APS does not have a good track record in this area and it needs to improve.

Labels: APS, Guns in Schools

# posted by marjorie @ 1:26 PM