A member of the Squad, a radical group of progressives in Congress, is calling on the federal government to stop funding police in schools.
Democrat Representative Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) said that the money should go toward funding alternatives to the police.
“Instead of subsidizing more police officers, we need to help schools hire more counselors, more nurses, more mental health practitioners, and our bill will do just that,” Pressley said Thursday according to the Boston Herald.
Fellow Democrat, Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), is sponsoring the Senate version of the bill.
“There are some things that happen in schools that have to be addressed with an arrest. But kids who are acting out are getting arrested. Kindergarteners are getting arrested,” Murphy said on Thursday, without evidence that such arrests are taking place.
One national study found that school resource officers (SROs) make schools safer even if they increase the number of arrests in schools.
FULLY DEFUND & ABOLISH LA SCHOOL POLICE.
Fund Black Student Achievement! #PoliceFreeLAUSD ❌?
Join the Twitter Storm: https://t.co/TYCxdeUXXM pic.twitter.com/fudGCTnpE8
— #StudentsDeserve (@LA_StudentsDsrv) June 15, 2021
“I also find evidence that SROs increase school safety,” said researcher Emily G. Owens, a criminology professor at University of California Irvine, “and help law enforcement agencies make arrests for drug crimes occurring on and off school grounds.”
The federal government has spent about $1 billion since 1999 on subsidies to make schools safer.
The act supported by Murphy and Pressley would prohibit federal funds from being used in schools to hire police or school resource officers
Pressley says that the police unfairly target black students.
“In my home state of Massachusetts, for example, black girls are four times more likely to be arrested than white girls. This is not simply an inequity, this is a crisis in and of itself,” she said.
The federal government made subsidies available to local schools for the hiring of SROs in the wake of the Columbine school shooting.
As a result, schools are reporting lower crime today than at any time since the 1990-2000 school year according to data cited by Heritage.
