police in lausd schools

7/24/2019 Police in LAUSD Schools

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Police in LAUSD Schools:The Need for Accountabilityand Alternatives

A project of the Community Rights Campaign

in Collaboration with the Los Angeles Chapter oDignity in Schools

Community Rights Campaign


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3/14Community Rights Campaign 3780 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 1200, Los Angeles, CA 90010 T 213.387.2800 F213.387.3500 www.thestrategycenter.org 3


Police in LAUSD Schools:

The Need For Accountability and Alternatives

October 2010

Introduction

On January 26th, 2010, LAUSD students from the Community Rights Campaign launched a new

initiative for greater accountability from the Los Angeles School Police Department with actions at

Manuel Arts, Westchester, and Cleveland High Schools. Students weathered the rain to promote

the campaign to students, teachers and community members at these sites in coordination

with the release of the Community Rights Campaign and Los Angeles Chapter of the Dignity in

Schools,Police in LAUSD Schools. The document calls for greater transparency, accountability

and the creation of new policies and procedures that restrict the use of force and role of police in

our schools to protect the civil/human rights of all LAUSD students.

Police in LAUSD Schoolshighlights:

News stories and reports on incidents of misconduct by the Los Angeles School Police Department dating back

ve years.

Reports of police misconduct gathered from over 1,500 student surveys collected by the Community Rights

Campaign at 18 LAUSD high schools. They include incidents of excessive force and restraint, verbal abuse,

sexual harassment, intimidation, frequent and indiscriminate use of mace and pepper spray on large

numbers of students, racial proling, handcuffs used on students whose crime was being late,

frequent searches, and more.

Recommendations on principles that should shape the role of school police in our schools, with an emphasis on

non-punitive forms of student accountability, decreased reliance on courts and citations, guaranteed civil rightsprotections, and increased use of public health- and mental health-centered interventions.

The ve concrete policy recommendations from Police in LAUSDSchoolsare:

Establish an independent and enforceable Police Review Boardmade up of parents, students, and

community members with the power to provide accountability.

Conduct a comprehensive review and assessmentwith student, parent and community input of the current

standards, procedures, and practices of school police including use of force, arrest, role and conduct.

Provide detailed and publicly available recordsof LASPD including but not limited to arrests, tickets,

complaints on police misconduct and resolutions to such complaints.

Establish an Ofce of Equal Protection, as approved but not yet acted upon in the 2007 Equal Protection

motion.

Ensure no collaborationof LAUSD/LASPD with gang database.

Beyond New Leadership New LASPD Chief Selection, We Need a New Commitment to Civil and

Educational Rights. With 340 sworn ofcers and 147 School Safety Ofcers, the Los Angeles School Police

Department is the largest school police department in the country. Police In LAUSD Schoolswas released as the


4/14Community Rights Campaign 3780 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 1200, Los Angeles, CA 90010 T 213.387.2800 F213.387.3500 www.thestrategycenter.org

Police in LAUSD Schools: The Need for Accountability and Alternatives

4

LAUSD Board of Education began the process of selecting a new Chief of Police for LASPD. During the initial release

of this document, we advocated for the LAUSD Board to use this transition in leadership within the LASPD as an

important opportunity to invite parents, students and community members to perform a comprehensive review and

evaluation of current police practices, procedures, and presence in our schools.

Therefore, we took the hiring process as a opening to engage key policy markers around School Police reform.

The Community Rights Campaign and the Los Angeles Chapter of Dignity in Schools began meeting with LAUSD

Board Members, Monica Garcia, Steve Zimmer, Nury Martinez, and Yolie Flores, Interim Chief Michael Bowman, and

Lieutenant Chris Stevens to discuss reforms of existing school discipline policies.

Since then, we have developed effective working relationships with these decision makers at LAUSD and the LASPD.

Recently, LAUSD Superintendent Cortines incorporated two of our demands into the hiring process for the new Chief

of School Police: (1) hold a public forum for the larger community to engage with the nal candidates; and (2) make

our policy recommendations part of the interviewing agenda with the nal candidates.

Beyond the hiring, we are currently working with policymakers to review each individual policy recommendation from

our two reports, Police in LAUSD Schoolsand Solutions for Los Angeles School Police: A Blueprint for School Police

Reform, and discuss the possibilities for their implementation within the LASPD. These documents has energized our

grassroots policy and advocacy effortsmoving our discussion around school discipline and policing of students to

center stage.

Denver, Colorado, Birmingham, Alabama, Clayton County, Georgia: There is a growing trend across the country

to adopt alternative discipline policies these cities and counties are introducing policies specically aimed at reducing

the number of students arrested, referred to court, and pushed out of school through suspensions and expulsions are

being implemented. The Los Angeles Unied School District has already begun to move in the direction of replacing

existing zero tolerance policies with more holistic alternatives through their adoption of School-Wide Positive

Behavior Support (SWPBS) with the support and advocacy parent organization, Community Asset Development Re-

dening Education (CADRE). Three years later, LAUSD has yet to fully implement SWPBS in all of its schools. We

are encouraging the Board to respect and uphold SWPBS and continue to work with community members and

organizations to develop student-centered and service-centered alternatives.

The work of the Community Rights Campaign to address the criminalization of students and the push out crisis inLos Angeles is our attempt to contribute to the national effort to reverse and ultimately end the school-to-prison

pipeline and, and more broadly to take a major hit at the mass incarceration of Black and Latino communities. We

believe the reforms in our Police in LAUSD Schoolscan foster an environment that respects the civil and human

rights of students, encourages greater community transparency and participation and nds common ground in

addressing the root causes of push-out/drop-out.

Thank you,

Kendra Willibyand Barbara Lott-Holland

Community Rights Campaign Lead Organizers



Across the United States, there is a growing presence of police deployed on public schools grounds. In somelarger districts such as Los Angeles and Houston, there are entire school police departments employed directlyby the school district. Police officers on school grounds patrol around schools and inside school hallways andincreasingly districts are turning to law enforcement to enforce discipline rules on and around campus. 1As such,the increasing presence of law enforcement in schools has contributed to moving student conduct into thedomain of the criminal justice system. This contradicts United Nations human rights standards that school safetyand discipline policies should avoid criminalizing the behavior of children and adolescents.2 Specifically, CaliforniaEducation Code states that students have the right to be free of being exposed to a hostile environment that

jeopardizes their access to equal educational opportunity.3

The move towards police-in-schools is part of a broader zero tolerance approach to school discipline whichasserts that certain student behaviors should trigger severe, mandatory actions, almost always beginning with theremoval of the child from the classroom.4 Therefore, in practice, zero tolerance means frequent suspensions,expulsions and arrests for a wide range of infractionsfrom weapons and drug possession to tardiness,cursing, writing on a desk, or talking back. Numerous studies have shown that zero tolerance policies andthe increasing reliance on school police to handle discipline issues unfairly target students of color and studentswith disabilities who, for example, are more likely to be arrested in school and receive harsher punishments forless severe behavior than their white peers.5 Ultimately, the long term impact of schools reliance on punitivediscipline policies, increased police presence, and court intervention is codifying a school to prison pipeline.6

Contrary to the zero tolerance approach, there is also a growing trend across the country to adopt alternativediscipline policies. From Denver, Colorado to Birmingham, Alabama to Clayton County, Georgia, policiesspecifically aimed at reducing the number of students arrested, referred to court, and pushed out of schoolthrough suspensions and expulsions are being implemented. Los Angeles is part of this growing trend throughthe LAUSD Boards unanimous approval of the Discipline Foundation Policy based on School-Wide Positive

Behavior Support, led by Community Asset Development re-Defining Education (CADRE). Yet the specific issue ofthe role and conduct of Los Angeles School Police has yet to be addressed and its absence stands in the way ofLAUSD fully implementing Positive Behavior Support.

Our analysis is rooted in a belief that the interpersonal school violence and drug use/abuse that exists in LAUSDschools are rooted in a long history of institutional racism and discrimination that Black, Latino, and other peopleof color have experienced in this country. We do not condone this student behavior, but we also firmly believethat the traditional tough on crime criminalizing approach has only exacerbated these inequities. The punitive-suppression approach leads to more drop-outs/push-outs of our young people towards the criminal justice system,which in turn leads to more obstacles to employment, deeper poverty and greater chances of incarceration. Thisis why we support the positive-support and prevention orientation that addresses and target the root causes ofviolence and drug abuse and to create schools where no youth is discarded or pushed out.

Community Rights Campaignin collaboration with Dignity in Schoools- LA

Police in LAUSD Schools:The Need for Accountability andAlternativesJanuary 2010

The Los Angeles School Police Department

The Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) has 340 sworn officers and 147 School Safety Officers,representing the largest school police department in the country.7 In the 2007 Equal Protection resolution, theLAUSD Board directed the District to review and evaluate current school police policies, practices and trainingrelating to the equitable treatment of students, specifically referring to Black and Latino students. This has yet tooccur. Currently, LAUSD is in the process of selecting a new Chief of Police for LASPD. This transition in leadershippresents an important opportunity for the Board to invite parents, students and community members to perform acomprehensive review and evaluation of current police practices, procedures and presence in our schools.


6/14Community Rights Campaign 3780 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 1200, Los Angeles, CA 90010 T 213.387.2800 F213.387.3500 www.thestrategycenter.org6

Los Angeles School Police Department (contd)

LASPD officers and all officers who work in and around schools must be held to particularly rigorous standards ofconduct and accountability because abuses can have lifelong ramifications for youth and their families. As such,LASPD actions, especially allegations of police misconduct, should be made public and immediately addressed.Unfortunately, public access to records on tickets, arrests and use of force complaints are restricted. 8

Furthermore, an independent and transparent mechanism of accountability does not yet exist. Complaints on policemisconduct are done entirely internally, bringing into question whether a fair and impartial investigation and

result can occur. We hope LASPD shares the desire to be held to these high standards and we know some officerssupport this as well.

We can only assume that cases of police misconduct are significantly underreported. Nonetheless, we believeenough evidence exists to merit significant alarm. A brief survey of news stories begins to paint the picture:

In 2005, two school police officers were caught on video by a school employee punching a student on theground at Santee High School.9 The video was sent to KCAL9who aired the footage and the two officerswere suspended for excessive use of force. Prior to this incident, police had broken up a fight with pepperspray, sending eight Santee High students to the hospital.

In September of 2006, the Palisadian Postreported an incident of an officer in Pacific Palisades using pepper

spray to arrest two disobedient eighth-graders.10

A crowd of student and adult bystanders, upset by theofficers use of force, were also sprayed. A history of excessive-force complaints against the officer werethen revealed, although the officer had never been suspended. During the 9-month internal investigation,the officer remained on patrol in the area. The results of the investigation were not fully disclosed.

In October of 2007, Spanish language newspaper Hoyreported on a 15-year-old student of Sylmar HighSchool being assaulted by school police.11 The incident took place during lunchtime when two LASPDofficers approached the student and took him to a closed bathroom. There, the agents pushed his headagainst the wall, elbowed him in the neck, called him names and ultimately he lost consciousness. He spentthe night at the hospital. The father was told the investigation would take 6 months. During that time, oneofficer was transferred, but the other remained patrolling the area.

In September of 2009, LA Weeklypublished a major expose on LASPD, including the story of an officer whosexually abused a young girl at University High School without repercussions. When the officer was movedto a patrol officer position, he assaulted another woman (who was not an LAUSD student) after pulling hercar over. The article explains that Board Member Julie Korenstein, then Chair of the Committee on SchoolSafety admitted that her committee was not even aware that LAUSD had an Internal Affairs unit, or thatthe I.A. division regularly placed its probes into misconduct by school cops at the bottom of the pile. 12

In Deprived of Dignity, a 2007 report by the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, seven focus groupswere conducted with a total of twenty-twoLAUSD students, eighteen parents and fourhigh school and middle school teachers. Inthese focus groups, students and parents

reported that police use intimidation andinterrogation techniques and excessive physicalforce to subdue students, such as slammingstudents against walls and grabbing studentsby the neck. In some cases, a small disciplinaryissue, like a student cutting class in the hallway,escalated and resulted in the use of force.Several students said that constant harassmentand threats from police and security have animpact on their attitudes and outcomes inschool.



Voices From the Students 13

There was a group of people and two studentswere supposedly fighting so the school policesprayed mace at everyone in the lunch area.My throat was burning and I couldnt stopcoughing.

Black female, 12th grade, Crenshaw

When they gave me the ticket they put me onthe ground and the police had his knee in myback. He was heavy and the handcuffs were verytight. After they let me go, my stomach hurt andmy hands hurt, too.

Latino male, 11th grade, Manual Arts

I saw a police tackle a student who wascooperating, he was getting on his knees and thepolice still tackled him, scraped him up badly, andput his knees real hard on the students neck. Thecop did it all for no reason because the kid wascooperating.

Black male, 10th grade, Dorsey

When we were walking to school we were 5minutes from there and 2 minutes late and schoolpolice pulled us over, pushed us on to the gate

and patted us without any questions.Black female, 10th grade, Westchester

The cops pulled us over for being one minutelate to school. He said it was truancy and put us inhandcuffs. When we asked him to loosen thecuffs he said No, Im running the show here, notyou.

-Latino male, 9th grade, Westchester

I saw a school police give my friend his numberand told her to call later, but not to tell anyone.

Black female, 11th grade, Manual Arts

My friend got into a confrontation with someone.They werent fighting, just arguing verbally. Theschool police officer came over and sprayed macein his face! He then handcuffed him and shovedhim to the ground. This made me upset because hewas already sprayed and couldnt resist, yet he gotthrown to the ground.

Black female, 12th grade, Westchester

I was chilling with my friends who are all Latino. Iassume the police believe that we cannot hangoutwith each other unless we are fighting because onecop surrounded us and called other cops to come.They searched us all and made us take off our shoes.One of the cops said, I bet none of you have agreen card. This statement provoked my friend andmade him call the cop a pig and thats why the copsarrested him.

Black male, 9th grade, LA High

My sister was arrested for being aggressive.She asked the police why they didnt interfereearlier and stop the quarrel. They said theywanted to wait for them to fight so theycould mace them.

Black male, 10th grade, Washington Prep

I saw a school police officer physically hitting astudent and grabbing him by the neck.

Latina female, 10th grade, Washington Prep

Through Community Rights Campaignsurveys of over 1,500 students in schools throughout the city, we have also

found numerous examples of serious accounts of police misconductexcessive force and restraint, verbal abuse,

sexual harassment, intimidation, frequent and indiscriminant use of mace and pepper spray on large numbers of

students, racial profiling, handcuffs used on students whose crime was being late, frequent searches, and more.



Zero tolerance and the increasing reliance on law

enforcement have led to the criminalization of

student behavior. Student conduct issues suchas fighting, truancy and tardiness becomecrimes, with increased penalties. Students of

color are targeted by the criminalization of studentbehavior as they are more likely to be excluded

from school, arrested and referred to juvenile

court even though they do not commit more

offenses at school.14

Experiencing or witnessing handcuffing,

excessive force, intimidation, verbal abuse, sexual

harassment, frequent searching and questioning

can have serious psychological impacts onyouth, many of whom already suffer fromdepression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

15

The most commonly used tactics to resolve

conflicts for police officers are citations, arrest,

force, or the threat of the use of such tactics.

Nationally, this is why a large number of tickets

and arrests are for disorderly conduct,

detrimental behavior, or disruption. In

many instances, these charges would not evenconstitute a crime if they were committedoutside of a school by an adult.

16

Strict security measures and large police

presence can help create a more hostile anddistrusting school environment, especially forthose students already at risk, contributing to

push-out/drop-out.17

Racial profiling by law enforcement, which hasbeen well documented throughout the country,

occurs in schools as well. Anecdotal evidence

from LAUSD students demonstrates profiling andbias by school police. One serious consequence

of this is the profiling of students into the gang

database, a list considered so untrustworthy that

former CA Attorney General Bill Lockyer stated

This database cannot and should not be used, in

California or elsewhere, to decide whether or not

a person is dangerous or should be detained.18

The presence of school police and involving school

police in discipline issues necessarily leads to more

arrests rather than alternative ways to address

student conduct. This contributes to what hasbeen termed by the Advancement Project and

other agencies and institutions as theschoolto prison pipeline.With 2.3 million people inprison and 5 million more on probation or parole,

the vast majority of whom are Black and Latino,

it is urgent we do everything possible to steer our

youth away from the legal system.

The involvement of police can lead to

the escalation of a conflict with serious

consequenceshandcuffs, use of force, and most

seriously, arrest. Studies show that being arrestedin school nearly doubles the odds of droppingout of school and, if coupled with a court

Why Restrict the Role and Conduct of School Police



Guiding Principles for LAUSD/LASPDAccountability and Alternatives

a) Strict restrictions on the use of force by police in schoolsSchool must be a place

where students feel safe and free from abuse or harassment by police, who carry signicant

power and have the ability to inict serious physical and emotional harm on students and

consequently their families. Even the mere presence of fully armed police ofcers can impact a

youth, instilling fear and normalizing the presence of weapons.

b) Restrictions on the role of police in schoolsThe ACLUs 2009 white paper, Policing in

Schools: Developing a Governance Document for School Resource Ofcers in K-12 Schools,

provides a critical lens to reconsider the role of police in our schools. The overall principle is

that we must set clear guidelines on what police are not involved in, in order to minimize

escalation of conict, arrest and court appearances of our youth. For example, acts including

but not limited to disorderly conduct, trespassing, insubordination, verbal abuse/harassment,

vandalism and/or grafti, disturbance, loitering, profanity and ghting that does not involve

a weapon should be considered issues of school discipline and notinvolve the police.

c) Clear and independent mechanisms of accountability for police misconductAs it

currently stands the LASPDs Use of Force Review Board is made up entirely of police ofcers

with no civilian oversight or public access to records of complaints and resolutions. The

process of ling the complaint must be clear, accessible and well publicized to all members

of the school community.

d) Ensure school discipline is in the hands of schools and fully complies with Positive

Behavior Support (PBS) standardsIn order to minimize arrest and involvement of the

criminal justice system and support the full development of our youth, it is imperative the

district see discipline as the responsibility of the school community, including educators,

administrators, students and families, and notthe police.

e) Invest in services and alternatives A more effective and holistic approach to creating

a safe school environment is to invest in alternatives such as peer mediation, counselors,

conict resolution, tutoring and mental health services. Such alternatives move away from

criminalizing student behavior towards addressing students academic and nonacademic

needs while teaching students how to handle their problems and conicts on their own.

f) Creation of a public health approach to interpersonal school violence and drug use/

abuse inside our schoolsOne of the leading reasons students are arrested in schools isdrug use. Criminalizing this behavior does nothing to address the underlying causes of drug

addiction/abuse. Youth who are using drugs need support and appropriate drug education

and treatment, not handcuffs. Similarly, there is a growing trend across the country to look

at youth violence as a public health epidemic, asserting that you cannot arrest your way out

of youth violence. This approach is rooted in the idea that most violence is preventable, not

inevitable, and requires a comprehensive and multidisciplinary effort to address the complex

underlying contributors to violence.20



Policy Recommendations1. Establish an independent and enforceable Police Review Boardmade up of parents, students,

and community members with the power to provide accountability. The Review Board must have thefollowing features: guided by civilian involvement, independence from law enforcement agencies,unrestricted investigatory power, transparent to the public and adequate funding. Please see forthcomingCommunity Rights Campaign Proposal for an Independent Elected Civilian Review Board for LASPD.

2. Conduct a comprehensive review and assessmentwith student, parent and community input ofthe current standards, procedures, and practices of school police including use of force, arrest, role andconduct. Special attention should be given to the issue of racial bias as approved but not yet acted uponin the 2007 Equal Protection and Civil Rights for All Students Board motion. Through a collaborativeeffort with the Dignity in Schools Campaign, we are working on a forthcoming report that proposeschanges to LASPD guidelines.

3. Provide detailed and publicly available recordsof LASPD including but not limited to arrests,tickets, complaints on police misconduct and resolutions to such complaints.

4. Establish an Office of Equal Protection, as approved but not yet acted upon in the 2007 EqualProtectionmotion, to serve as a clearinghouse for claims of discrimination by students and parents witha process for resolutions.

5. Ensure no collaborationof LAUSD/LASPD with the gang database.

ConclusionWe write this document to contribute to the efforts to reform our public schools and decreasing the numberof youth who are pushed out of school and into the criminal justice system . We know that once in thesystem, many of our youth will never get out of it. This is why policies and practices that push out andcriminalize our students must end. We know many LAUSD Board members, community members, parents,youth, other organizations, and school police officers share this goal. An in-depth analysis of the role andconduct of school police is needed to seize the critical opportunity the district has in selecting the new chief ofschool police. The Community Rights Campaign and Dignity in Schools urges the LAUSD Board to create newmechanisms and policies that hold the Los Angeles School Police Department accountable to the civil/humanrights of all LAUSD studentsspecifically by creating new LAUSD policies to restrict the role and use of forceof LASPD inside our schools and an independent civilian review board.

I used to hang out in this one area of school where the greasers hungout. One day the school police came and told them to get out of that area,giving no reason as to why. They all start to clear the area, except for oneof the girls who was gathering her books. One officer then quickly cornersher and starts screaming out ordersfor her to get out, all the while thegirl looks frightened and she tries to explain that she was just getting herstuff. All of a sudden theofficer grabs her in a choke hold!She kepttrying to say I cant breathe.We told the officer to let go of her because

she was turning bright red, but instead of listening, she kept her chokehold and led the girl in this position all the way to the Deans office. TheAssistant Principal passed by and all he said was Pick up your trash. Wedidnt see her for like two weeks, and it had turned out that her mothertransferred her out because the girl felt so humiliated and afraid tocome back. -Lissett Lazo, Cleveland High School Class of 2008,

Youth organizer, Community Rights Campaign



1. National Juvenile Defender Center. Defending Clients Who Have Been Searched and Interrogated at School: A Guide forJuvenile Defenders, 2009.

2. National Economic and Social Rights Initiative. Deprived of Dignity: Degrading Treatment and Abusive Discipline in New YorkCity & Los Angeles Public Schools,March 2007.

3. http:/www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=edc&group=00001-01000&file=200-201

4. New York Civil Liberties Union and Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Safety With Dignity: Alternatives to the Over-Policing of Schools, July 2009.

5. National Economic and Social Rights Initiative. Deprived of Dignity: Degrading Treatment and Abusive Discipline in New YorkCity & Los Angeles Public Schools,March 2007.

6. For further readings on the school to prison pipeline - Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse toJailhouse Track, 2003.

7. http://www.laspd.com

8. In order to access Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) records, a member of the public must know how to writea formal public records requests, something the average person does not know how to do. Further, through our ownexperience of submitting such records requests, we have found it difficult to get the full information requested, and we arean experienced organization with access to lawyers. As explained by Interim Chief Bowman at the October 20th Committee

as a Whole, the LASPD has only two staff that keep and process records. It is unacceptable that an understaffed recordsdepartment can be an excuse to cover up possible civil rights violations against the students in LAUSD.

9. http://www.garmentandcitizen.com/category/archives/archived-news-stories/2005-12-21-0_483.php?sort=5d&page=82

10. http://www.palisadespost.com/news/content.php?id=2860

11. Castro, Francisco. Alumno Denuncia Ataque de Polica Escolar. Hoy,12 October 2007.

12. While aspects of this expos may be far reaching, the concrete incidents of misconduct exposed cannot and must not bediscarded. Further, through our own attendance of the School Safety Committee (which no longer exists), issues of policeconduct were rarely if ever discussed, as the article describes.

13. These quotes were selected from surveys and focus groups we conducted with LAUSD students throughout the city.

14. National Juvenile Defender Center. Defending Clients Who Have Been Searched and Interrogated at School: A Guide forJuvenile Defenders, 2009.

15. A survey of over 6,000 South Los Angeles high school students by the organization Community Coalition in 2008 foundwidespread symptoms of depression, and identified student mental health as a contributing factor to the drop-out crisisplaguing South Los Angeles schools.

16. Advancement Project, Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track, 2003.

17. Beger, Randall R. The Worst of Both Worlds: School Security and the Disappearing Fourth Amendment Rights of Students.Criminal Justice Review, Autumun 2003.

18. Pintado-Vertner, Ryan. How is Juvenile Justice Served? Racially biased system just sweeps troubled youths under the rug. The SanFrancisco Chronicle, 27 February 2000. Appearing in the gang database has serious consequencesit is used to determine gangenhancements or increased sentencing and is frequently used by prosecutors to leverage a plea. Further, the database is secret

you are not told if you are on it and there is no mechanism to remove your name from it.

19. Sweeten, Gary. Who Will Graduate? Disruption of High School Education by Arrest and Court Involvement.JusticeQuarterly, December 2006.

20. We are influenced by these two document: Skagar, Rodney, Beyond Zero Tolerance: A Reality-Based Approach toDrug Education and School Discipline, Drug Policy Alliance, 2007 and http://www.preventioninstitute.org/documents/

PreventingViolenceFAQ10809.pdf

End Notes

Photographic Credits

Page 2:http://www.life.com/image/52675431

Page 4: http://www.goldenme.com/hotissue/story3/index.html



The LABOR/COMMUNITY Strategy Center

3780 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 1200, Los Angeles, CA 90010T 213.387.2800 F213.387.3500www.thestrategycenter.org

Hey LAUSD!I'm Pre-Med, Pre-Job

NOT Pre-Prison!


What YOU Can Do

1. Collect storiesof youth and parents who have experienced or witnessed incidents with schoolpolice such as: police being called in for routine discipline issues, excessive force, arrest, handcuffing,verbal or physical abuse. These stories are critical as we build our case at LAUSD.

2. Endorse the Community Rights No to Pre-Prisons Platform.

3. Send a letter to your LAUSD Board Memberand Interim Chief of Police Michael Bowman urgingthem to support the Community Rights Campaign policy recommendations on school police. Visitwww.lausd.netto find your representative.

4. Join the Community Rights Campaignby becoming a member or making a donation.

5. For additional resources and information on Dignity in Schools Campaign,visit:www.dignityinschools.org

For more information, contact Kendra Williby at (213) 387-2800 or

[email protected]

This document was produced by the Community Rights Campaign in conjunction with the

Los Angeles Chapter of Dignity in Schools Campaign


13/14


14/14

On-the-ground groups speak:

In Police in LAUSD Schools, CRC and DSC-LA

have issued the LAUSD Board and the larger

community a bold call to action.We all want

our school communities to be safe, but we cannot

tolerate the overt and harmful criminalization of

our youth. Its time for the LAUSD Board to create

meaningful oversight of the LASPD by following the

recommendations of this report.

-Ruth S. Cusick, Staff Attorney, Advocates for

Children of New York, Inc.

The work of the Community Rights Campaign

is critically important to understanding the

impact of education and justice policy decisions

on students of color. There is an urgent need

for Los Angeles policymakers to address the over-criminalization of LAUSD students by implementing

the recommendations offered.-Jim Freeman, Staff Attorney, Advancement

Project (Washington, DC)

If the intended use of police in schools is

designed to foster safer learning environments,

this report throws a cold splash of reality in

a much needed way. The successful efforts of

students from Padres y Jovens Unidos in Denver to

overhaul the discipline code and create Restorative

Justice Programs was guided by the belief that

all students deseve a college ready education

and that awed zero tolerance policies increaseracial disparities in push-out, attendance, and

graduation rates. This report is similarly grounded

and not only highlights disturbing patterns and

impacts on individual students, but it comes loaded

with solutions and a call for justice for LAUSD

communities.

-Marco Nuez, Director of Organizing, Padres y

Jovenes Unidos

This report on police in LAUSD schools raises

some very important questions about how the

adults in the building are interacting with our

children in regards to the disparate discipline

policies applied to Brown and Black students.

These accounts of mistreatment of our children

by ALL adults, and the call for more transparency

and date collection will enable us to monitor and

evaluate the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of our

discipline policies.

-Angelica Salazar, former LAUSD teacher and

child advocate.

police in lausd schools

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