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Activists raise the school-cop issue at a Black Lives Matter rally.
Police top brass and an activist youth mentor looked at the same data and saw two different stories.
Citywide Youth Coalition Executive Director Addys M. Castillo saw school administrators calling police officers on students instead of using other solutions. Assistant Police Chief Karl Jacobson saw officers successfully deescalating situations and avoiding arrests.
Castillo and Jacobson provided those two perspectives at a recent meeting of a work group tasked with recommending whether to keep school resource officers (SROs) in New Haven Public Schools.
“I’m not complaining about the police department. I’m saying it’s overused,” Castillo said at the last Board of Education virtual subcommittee meeting.
The statistic in question was 2,000 calls from New Haven schools to the New Haven Police Department, resulting in around 30 arrests per year.
“Out of 2,000 calls, there were only 30 arrests. We’re doing everything possible not to arrest, and it’s a more positive situation than if didn’t have SROs. That’s our perspective,” Jacobson said.
“Maybe I’m wrong. Thank you so much for speaking up. We can’t get better as police and as a community without you guys,” he added.
Student representative Lihame Arouna (pictured): SROs are part of a system that criminalizes Black and brown children.
The work group’s existence was thanks to Board of Education student representative Lihame Arouna, who brought student demands from this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests to the board.
It mirrored similar calls nationwide to reexamine the role of police officers in school buildings.
Upon request, Arouna reminded the work group of her reasoning.
“I and many other New Haven Public Schools students feel that having SROs in New Haven schools are criminalizing students. I think there is a better way to handle behavioral issues,” Arouna said. “Are they serving their purpose or are they causing more harm than necessary? There are a lot of studies that show that policing children like this can be very dangerous.”
She added that many Black and brown students already have negative experiences with police officers outside of school and bring that trauma with them.
“It’s not about school resource officers personally but the whole system that often even students miss. Maybe they’re being criminalized. Having a police officer in school isn’t very normal for all students,” Arouna said.
Arouna also questioned oft-lauded programs like the New Haven Police Activities League (PAL) summer camp. Why is it a good thing for students to get to know police officers better and be more exposed to the criminal justice system? she asked.
“I think of all of the things that money could be used for instead of PAL. The nonprofits [that are supposed to be supporting youths] — we are always fighting for crumbs,” Castillo said.
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Wilbur Cross Principal Edith Johnson: SROs have helped me.
Wilbur Cross High School Principal Edith Johnson took issue with the idea that administrators, at least at Wilbur Cross, were calling the police too frequently.
She said that school security guards, who cannot arrest students, respond to most student behavioral issues. Teachers call them to help break up fights or escort someone out of class who is refusing to follow instructions.
SROs are called in when there is a weapon involved or a crime-like event, Johnson said. She added that they sometimes volunteer to help deescalate fights or to check bathrooms for students skipping when the school is short-staffed for the day. She recalled asking a student to go back to class and the student started swearing at her. The SRO helped take the student aside and calm them down.
“How many times have they have helped me deescalate a situation that might be escalated by me as a principal, because of the power dynamic which happens in general,” Johnson said.
She said that she thinks about this question often and is not saying that experiences of discrimination students of color have relayed are not true.
Not every school has an SRO on-site. The biggest schools, like Wilbur Cross, James Hillhouse High School and Hill Regional Career High School, do have one to two officers stationed at the school.
High School in the Community does not have an SRO. Instead, HSC calls an officer stationed elsewhere if a crime arises.
“That’s a way we can look at things. Maybe the SRO doesn’t have to be in the building,” offered HSC School Culture Leader Michelle Cabaldon.
The other two high schoolers on the call were not as focused on SRO alternatives as Arouna. All three said that they personally had positive experiences with SROs.
“Some students say that some of the SROs are rude towards them for no reason. My experience is that they are welcoming,” said one student, listed only as Jocelyn.
She said that more than one officer creates the impression that students are under surveillance.
“I think having security is enough. I wouldn’t miss them if they weren’t there but it’s good to have them,” she said.
Carlos Torre.
The third student, Amaia Richlyn, said two SROs are necessary. One could be backup for the other, she said.
The work group’s chair, former Board of Education member Carlos Torre, asked whether it would be possible to settle the too many calls versus low arrest rate question with more data. He asked Jacobson for more information on the reason for each call. Were administrators dealing with high-level crises that SROs were able to diffuse, or were they calling the police for behavioral issues? Jacobson said that he would try to pull what data he could.