Someone Needs To Stop The Fights, by Dr. Michael Flanagan

I support the call to remove the police from public schools. 

I do not believe that police officers should be patrolling the halls of public schools. It has been my experience that when assigned to a school police do not see students, they see potential criminals. They do not see adolescent behavior, they see crimes and respond as they are trained--with handcuffs and arrests. All too often, the police officers assigned to schools are not people of color, and are not “from” the neighborhoods they work in. So the students of the school will never be “their” kids, the way they are to the educators of that school. There are too many instances for racial injustice under that scenario. 

Discipline in schools has historically manifested the same systemic racism as every other part of our society. Students of color are far more likely to be arrested than white students are. Students of color with behavioral and emotional issues are even more likely to be handcuffed and physically abused by police. School safety and discipline should ultimately be in the hands of school administrations. Although even then students of color are treated unequally.

I agree that we need more counselors, and that by being proactive many disciplinary incidents can be headed off. But what will happen when there are physical altercations and other types of dangerous of behavior? 

Someone needs to stop the fights.

In the “old days” teachers and administrators would step in to intercede during physical altercations. But that is not the case anymore. Now, educators are scared of lawsuits and disciplinary repercussions for getting involved in student fights. They are hesitant to touch a child even to prevent them from harming themselves or others. Our teacher’s unions tell us not to get involved. Legally all we have to do is say “stop” and call for assistance. So who will we be calling for assistance? 

I have stopped hundreds of physical altercations in my 34 years of working in public high schools. I can not explain to you what it feels like to enter a classroom where punches and desks are flying around the room. Or a cafeteria where students are standing on tables screaming watching two girls fight, their hair wrapped in each other’s fingers. Or stopping a melee in the middle of a crowded hallway that spreads like wildfire. Restorative justice and conflict resolution by counselors is incredibly important, and done right can better any school environment. But before that happens there needs to be physical intervention to stop the children from hurting each other. 

If we remove the police from school buildings, as we should, there will need to be new training and a change in policy on what teachers can do to stop fights. Perhaps elementary school children are somewhat easier to protect, but middle school and high school kids are fast, strong and can cause injuries when fighting. Which teachers reading this feel they are prepared to step in between two 17 year old boys throwing punches?

In New York City School Safety Officers used to work for the Department of Education. In 1998 under Mayor Rudy Giuliani the OSS became part of the NYPD. They are not supervised by the principals and the handcuffs come out much quicker. School safety personnel need to be hired by the school districts again and supervised by the principals, not the precincts. 

All schools have discipline issues. All of them. If school safety was more under the control of the educators and not of the police department, the majority of those disciplinary incidents would be handled by the school, not the police and the justice system. Again, there are clear issues of inequality with suspensions of students of color at the school level that still needs to be addressed. But the criminalization of students of must end now.

In NYC our school safety officers are mostly people of color, who live in the neighborhoods they work in. They very often have a positive influence on the children they work with. They know their names, their friends and family, they know the issues in the neighborhood. Children often confide in them, even more so than they do their teachers or counselors. The districts should consider recruiting these men and women to work for the schools, not the police department. Our children need to see people of color as authority figures who care about them. And also keep them safe. 

We need to stop the schools to prison pipeline. However, we cannot forget the fact that schools need to be a safe place. Safety personnel should work directly for the school district, under the principal and superintendent, and not the police department. Our children need to be protected, but not criminalized.