Putting Armed Guards In Schools Leads To Racial Discrimination, More Student Arrests

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/04/12/1859091/putting-armed-guards-in-schools-leads-to-racial-discrimination-more-student-arrests/

The National Rifle Association (NRA)’s main response in the wake of the deadly shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, other than staunch opposition to even the most minor gun law reforms, has been a proposal to increase the number of armed guards in schools.

 However, a deeply reported piece in today’s New York Times suggests that more guns in schools would do little to improve school safety while simultaneously increasing police harassment of students along racial lines.

The article, by Erik Eckholm, surveyed the rise of “school resource officers” (policemen or non-police armed guards) in American school districts since the late 1990s. 

Eckholm found little to suggest that officers had made schools safer; he quotes University of Maryland school crime expert Denise C. Gottfredson as saying “There is no evidence that placing officers in the schools improves safety.” She concludes, moreover, that “it increases the number of minor behavior problems that are referred to the police, pushing kids into the criminal system.”

not sure whether education is high on the republican list of things to do, keepin' them dumb and down on the farm makes for better dupee's.

as to police harrassing students i can see that as a reality, and i can see them going overboard with it and tagging who they consider "the real problems".

Eckholm assembles ample evidence to support this conclusion:

Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of students are arrested or given criminal citations at schools each year. A large share are sent to court for relatively minor offenses, with black and Hispanic students and those with disabilities disproportionately affected, according to recent reports from civil rights groups, including the Advancement Project, in Washington, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in New York.

Such criminal charges may be most prevalent in Texas, where police officers based in schools write more than 100,000 misdemeanor tickets each yearaid Deborah Fowler, the deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a legal advocacy center in Austin. The students seldom get legal aid, she noted, and they may face hundreds of dollars in fines, community service and, in some cases, a lasting record that could affect applications for jobs or the military….Black students in the school district in Bryan, [Texas,] [activists] noted, receive criminal misdemeanor citations at four times the rate of white students.

there is no surprise here, this is a constant for decades just another reason why Black and Hispanic kids grow up not so fond of "officer unfriendly".