Council Member Donovan Richards (NYC Council via Flickr)
June 17, 2020 By Michael Dorgan
Council Member Donovan Richards, a borough president candidate, has called on the city to remove NYPD officers from school security duties.
Richards wants the Department of Education to take back the role of school safety following widespread demands for police reform.
Donovan, in a joint statement released with Brooklyn Council Member Mark Treyger Monday, said that the more than 5,000 NYPD school safety agents should be pulled out of schools.
The current system encourages a zero-tolerance approach to school discipline with severe consequences for minor infractions, the lawmakers said.
Black, brown and special needs students have been disproportionately affected under this system, they said.
The council members said that school safety reforms over the past 25 years have been futile and called for structural changes to be implemented instead.
“At a time of unprecedented crisis, we do not have time for half-measures in service of maintaining a fatally flawed system,” they said.
“We need to return school safety to DOE now, to ensure that the trauma that children are experiencing is temporary, not generational.”
The NYPD took over the Division of School Safety from the DOE in 1998 but the council members said that the police department has resisted reforms.
For example, the NYPD has refused to share reports on the location of metal detectors and random scanners in schools, they said. The city council passed a law in 2015 demanding police hand over this data.
Further, school principals do not have the ability to evaluate the performance of school safety agents, despite an agreement between the NYPD and the DOE last year, they said.
“Enough is enough,” they said. “It is time for the Division of School Safety to be removed from the NYPD and returned to the DOE.”
The legislators want NYPD school safety funds to be diverted into social and emotional support structures for students.
The city spends more on school safety agents than school counselors, social workers, and psychologists combined, they said.
“A seven-year-old having a bad day in a school without a social worker is not an NYPD issue,” they said.
“School safety personnel still have a role to play in keeping children safe but as part of a holistic approach to school climate led by school leaders, not as a fiefdom of the NYPD operating within schools,” they said.
Council Member Mark Treyger (NYC Council via Flickr)
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12 Comments
His kids probably attend private schools. NYC Public School are bad enough. Knives, guns, box cutters, shanks, gangs. Be my guest remove the School Safety agents then have a stabbing or shoot out happen several times per month at your local schools. Be killed while learning at school then ask yourself who is responsible? It could have been prevented but a group of idiots like this Moron running for borough president wants to eliminate School safety officers, GO AHEAD endanger the lives of teachers, school staff and kids that want to learn. PAY THE PRICE, the ULTIMATE PRICE, want to Get killed, send your kid to a NYC Public School!!!!
VOLATILE!!!
He seriously looks pissed enough for him to lose control of himself.
Hey! The reason why we need police in schools!!!!!
#fail.
“The current system encourages a zero-tolerance approach to school discipline with severe consequences for minor infractions, the lawmakers said”. What school system is this referring to? Most schools have no consequences for anything! I have been a teacher for over 20 years and it gets worse every year!
Mindless non sense. This guy is not qualified. The schools with the highest crime rates are in minority neighborhoods. Those children will be hurt.
American school culture lacks respect for the teacher. In other countries teacher has an absolute authority. In America teacher is a punching bag for the parents. Unless there is a cultural shift removing officers is probably not a good idea.
But remember it’s the parents who teach and train their children to respect elders and ‘other important people’.
And a reminder: parents are the ones teaching and training their children to respect elders and other “important people”.
Or not. Then they whine at bailing their adult children out of jail. Again and again.
It’s their own fault and funeral. You reap what you sow.
GOOD! #ACAB
We need school safety. Teachers are in the business of teaching; they’re not in the business of breaking up fights and patrolling hallways. School safety is there to make sure students aren’t just hanging around and doing stupid stuff. I was in public school my whole life. I’ve seen some stuff.
This is ridiculous! First you allow the success academies and other charter schools reserve the right to KICK OUT behavior problem students (regular doe must accept them), now you want to remove the only things making this system safe?
Quick! All these people who are behind this ridiculous action: we need to lock them in a room with these “students” and see how long it is until they start banging on the door!
Making schools less safe.
Never thought that would be be considered a winning issue.
This anti-cop hate and hysteria has got to stop.
What would the school do about that w/o cops?!