Coming into the 21st century, the American education system experienced an event like no other, the attack on Columbine high school. Before this tragedy, no one knew the term of an “active shooter”, but today schools are filled with police officers and school shooting drills have become common occurrences. As we look back, has this strict environment allowed for many of our students to fall through the cracks as a result of the pursuit of safety?
At our own school, Liberty, there is an SRO, student resource officer, and various officers that patrol the campus in order to create a safe environment for the students. They’re most commonly seen at the front of the school, near the den offices, and sometimes around the Freshman tree. Our newest SRO, Officer Jackie Veillette, is a fourteen-year veteran of the Brentwood Police Department who hopes to become a person who students feel safe to come to.
Officer Veilette states ,“I think sometimes people are afraid to talk to us, or they don’t think it’s our job.”. She later clarifies,” Even if they’re struggling [...] and need parent advice, or where to go for resources for their kids, don’t be afraid to ask.”
In these types of environments with high police presence has, inconsequently, led to more students having to acknowledge their own behavior and appearance in order to not be perceived as a threat.
For instance, in a study based in New York City from 2004 to 2012, higher rates of police in neighborhoods were linked to decreases in test scores and higher rates of absences in male African-American children. This increase in police presence, from an attempt to make more low-level offense arrests, revealed that the over-policing had only targeted minority-rich environments from the fact that white students weren’t included in the study because of their small population in these environments.
“High rates of direct or indirect contact with police may also create stress and other health and emotional responses that undermine cognitive performance.” Stated the study’s researchers, Joscha Legewie and Jeffery Fagan. Both researchers from prestigious universities, Fagan from Columbia and Legewie from Harvard, have various respective articles discussing the issues surrounding academia and law.
In a similar study based in Texas from 1999 to 2008, Emily K. Weisburst, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs,, had found that low-income students, most commonly African-American or Hispanic students, experienced higher rates of discipline in their schools than their white counterparts. With higher rates of police interaction between these groups of students, Weisburst estimates it will unfortunately lead to a decrease in willingness to participate in academic environments and will most likely inhibit ambitions to graduate.
In the same journal, Weisburst adds more information about the effects of police ,” I also find that exposure to a three-year federal grant for school police is associated with a 2.5 percent decrease in high school graduation rates and a four percent decrease in college enrollment rates.”
In an interview with a Liberty senior, Brain Harrigan, he addresses the concerns he had in coming to school.“ As a freshman, having police around the school always made the situation feel worse than what it was.” He later shares,” In middle school, I had an incident with officers taking me out of class and this situation led me to stress during every reaction with police.”
While the initial precaution of officers coming into schools was for the safety of our students, it has incidentally led to an environment of over policing and fear of escalation through any minor thing. These experiences will eventually lead to a major question of, should police officers still be at our school? At our school, it lies on the shoulders of our administration on how they proceed with providing essential training in order to be a positive influence on our school rather than a negative one. It then becomes our duty to report actions that make you uncomfortable in order to create a better academic environment through change.
Cover photo by Michael Stravato.
About the writer:
Dominic Lau is a staff writer for The Lion's Roar. You can learn more information about him by clicking here.
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