School Resource Officers

Predictive policing strategies
for children face pushback

“They basically built this system as a justification to chase the bad kids out of town," said one expert.

June 6, 2021 | NBC News - Click here to read the article

Pasco County’s approach to “intelligence-led” policing, developed over a decade, has drawn particular concern from civil liberties experts because of a data-sharing arrangement with the local school district, which was first reported by Tampa Bay Times. That partnership gave the police access to data relating to students’ grades, attendance and behavior as well as any history of abuse or other “adverse childhood experiences.”

School records were used to allocate students one of four labels: on track, at risk, off track or critical. Getting a D grade or having a parent or sibling go to prison could be enough to put a child in the “at risk” category, according to Pasco’s own 83-page “Intelligence-Led Policing Manual,” first obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.

The manual, last updated in January 2018, states that the data-sharing was designed to identify “at-risk youth who are destined to a life of crime” and intervene to “set them on the right path.”

The sheriff’s office took the list of 20,000 students determined to be at risk, according to school data, and cross-referenced it with its own records of law enforcement interactions to come up with a smaller list of a few hundred students to be monitored closely and offered “positive mentorship and support” by school resource officers — sheriff’s office deputies contracted to work at the school. The agency does not notify parents of children added to the list but said parents can file a public records request to find out.

The history of police killing children in America

Ma’Khia Bryant, Adam Toledo, and law enforcement’s long tradition of policing and brutalizing Black and brown children.

April 22, 2021 | Vox - Click here to read the article

According to a study by researchers at the Children’s National Hospital, Black children are six times more likely to be fatally shot by police than white children, and between 2003 and 2018, about 93 percent of the children killed were boys. The odds for the adult population are similar — a Black person in America is three times more likely to be killed by police than a white person. So do officers fail to recognize the distinction between an adult man and a boy when they fire a gun, or do they just not care?

One answer to this can be found in a study published in 2014, which showed that Black children are often perceived as older than their white counterparts of the same age. The study reported that police officers “overestimated the age of Black and Latino child crime suspects. White children, on the other hand, were not subjected to such overestimations.” 

It’s not going to be different until we radically reduce the footprint of police officers in the lives of Black and brown children. That means reducing stops and frisks, it means police-free schools, it means narrowing the role police officers have in society. We are engaging police with young people far more than necessary. Right now police officers are intervening in circumstances where a mental health counselor, a peer mediator, or a social worker would be so much better. So, for example, following the lead of a program called CAHOOTS based in Oregon, which is a mobile crisis unit that people can call to handle mental health crises instead of the police.

Second, we have to radically shift the narrative, to help people understand that Black children and brown children are children. They have the same features of adolescence, you know, experimenting with drugs, impulsivity, and resilience and rehabilitation are true for Black and brown children as they are for white children.

Third, until we shift that narrative, we have to have rules and regulations in place to narrow police discretion. We should prohibit use of force for young people. Most children can be redirected and safely managed without deadly force. We also don’t need tasers, we don’t need chokeholds, we don’t need body slams, and we don’t need pepper spray. And when force is absolutely necessary, it has to be non-deadly force.