| News Report RACISM IN NY'S SCHOOLS ALLEGED
School Safety
History of
Police Brutality
Case
Studies of Police Brutality
Giuliani's
Ton Ton Macoutes
Resources:
Center for Constitutional Rights (800) 764-0235
National Coalition on Police Accountability (312) 663-5392
National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights 212 614-5355 rperez@boricuanet.org
National Peoples Campaign - 39 West 14th Street, #206, NY, NY 10011. (212) 633-6646;
(Fax) (212) 633-2889
Speak Out! - POB 99096, Emeryville, CA 94662 Phone: (510) 601-0182; Fax: (510)
601-0183; speakout@igc.apc.org |
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After a vociferous
and emotional debate from concerned parents, teachers and community leaders, the Board of
Education voted unanimously Wednesday night to transfer control of security in the city's
public schools to the Police Department. The 7-0 vote came after more than two dozen
speakers implored board members not to turn security over to the police, saying it would
create a prisonlike atmosphere in the schools. Under the plan, to begin no later than Dec.
31, the training, recruiting and managing of the Division of School Safety's 3,200
officers will be turned over to the Police Department, but the officers will not carry
guns. Uniformed and armed officers will continue to patrol 128 of the city's 1,100
schools.
Objections to the plan were particularly emphasized by black leaders, who said black
children already have strained relations with the police, which was underscored by clashes
at a youth rally in Harlem earlier this month. The Rev. Al Sharpton said he was concerned
about what he said was a lack of understanding of youth culture among police officers,
particularly white officers. "In a school system where the overwhelming majority of
the students are from the Latino and African-American community," he said, "you
cannot divorce what happened on Sept. 16, 1992, from Sept. 16, 1998, because some of the
same people and attitudes exist." Other opponents said the police presence would
interfere with the learning atmosphere for the system's 1.1 million schoolchildren. Under the plan, the training, recruiting and managing of the
Division of School Safety's 3,200 officers will be turned over to the Police Department,
though they will not carry guns. In addition, uniformed and armed police officers will
continue to patrol 128 of the city's 1,100 schools. The school system and the Police
Department will continue to maintain separate incident reports.
The issue of police influence in schools has weighed
heavily on the system, playing a key role in the departure of Ramon C. Cortines as
Chancellor in October 1995. Giuliani engaged in a bitter feud with Cortines, who opposed
police control of school safety as an interference in the learning atmosphere for the
system's 1.1 million schoolchildren. Cortines cited the
dispute as a reason for his resignation.
Shortly after the current Chancellor Rudy Crew was appointed, he made clear that he also
opposed police control of school safety. But Crew's relations with Giuliani have been
amiable and the two crafted a compromise in which the Police Department is in charge but,
for the time being, does not increase its personnel in the schools. The measure to be
voted Tuesday is essentially a broad outline of the takeover, but numerous questions
remain, among them these: Who decides whether a hallway fistfight warrants an arrest by
the police or a suspension by the principal? Will the current 3,200 officers be retrained?
Who has the final say on whether to add more schools to regular police patrols, the Police
Commissioner or
the Chancellor? A key question among critics of the plan is whether principals truly
maintain their authority over school discipline. |
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Board officials
say they do, unless a serious incident arises. But who prevails -- the principal or the
Police Department -- on borderline cases like student fights remains murky. The language
of the "memorandum of understanding," which has not been publicly released but
has been leaked to reporters, leaves ample room for either to decide.
"School security personnel and/or N.Y.P.D. officers, to the fullest extent
practicable, in instance not requiring immediate arrest or other immediate action, shall
consult with the principal of a school or his or her designee prior to placing a student
enrolled at such school under arrest," the memo says. "Officers shall take into
account any information provided by the principal or designee." Other points still to
be worked out include specifically how the training of officers will differ and whether
any of the current force will be dismissed or retrained. The memo says that within two
months of the implementation, tentatively set for Nov. 1 and renewable after four years,
the police will put in place a "recruitment, hiring and training plan" in
consultation with the Chancellor's staff but leaves open whether that means new recruits
or current personnel.
The takeover has been urged for five years by Mayor Giuliani, who has contended that the
move would improve safety and erase a Board of Education unit whose officers and officials
have been involved in school crimes and corruption over the years. School officials have
long resisted such a move because of fears that the police would infringe on educators'
autonomy and create a prisonlike air in schools.
The plan does not call for an increase in the number of schools already patrolled by one
to three regular police officers beyond the 128. But it does leave open the option if the
Chancellor and Police Commissioner concur although it does not spell out what happens if
they do not. "The school is a community where established relationships among
teachers, guidance counselors and students are more important than those with the
police," said Jeremy Travis, head of the National Institute of Justice and a former
New York police deputy commissioner who headed a commission that studied the school safety
division in the early 1990's. "The overwhelming responsibility for safety is with
that community, not the police."
Crew said he would reserve the right to veto the number of officers assigned to a school.
But details of exactly how the plan will work were left intentionally vague by Crew, who
said that people needed room to work within the framework of their own relationships. For
example, the question of who would settle student disputes, the police or school
principals, was left open, though there is an appeals procedure in place if serious
disagreements arise. He said most decisions would be made case by case. "There still
is going to be a fair amount of ambiguity about this," Crew said. "I think there
is going to need to be further clarification of it."
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