Deal keeps police in Wake County schools, but some are unhappy

A new agreement will keep police officers in Wake County schools for the next three years, but some activists say the deal doesn’t do enough to protect minority students from what they consider unfair targeting by law enforcement.

The Wake County school board approved an agreement Tuesday with local law enforcement agencies that governs how school resource officers will operate through June 2020. The vote came despite pleas from groups, including the ACLU of North Carolina, to delay the decision to address concerns about how police don’t have to report the number of times they use stun guns or other force on students.

Activists alluded to the national attention Wake got in January after a video was posted on Twitter of a school resource officer slamming a Rolesville High School student to the floor. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said no criminal charges would be filed against the officer, who resigned from the Rolesville Police Department.

“I appreciate the many priorities in front of this board, but placing armed law enforcement officers in our public schools, especially when these programs have a documented pattern of racial bias and incidences of inappropriate use of force, must be a community conversation among all partners,” Sarah Gillooly, policy director of the ACLU of North Carolina, told the school board.

But school leaders said they received community input about the agreement. School board members also pointed to the need to get a new agreement in place before the current memorandum of understanding expires June 30.

“We’re not going to hold up the MOU, but we absolutely agree that there’s some work to do,” said school board Chairwoman Monika Johnson-Hostler.

The school system contracts with law enforcement agencies for more than 60 school resource officers who are in every high school and most middle schools. School resource officers provide security, speak in classes and mentor students.

The number of school resource officers increased significantly nationally and in Wake County following the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado in 1999, when two teens killed 13 people and wounded more than 20 others before killing themselves.

The National Center for Education Statistics reported that 63 percent of U.S. middle schools and 64 percent of high schools had a school resource officer during the 2013-14 school year.

“The officer is there building relationships, bridging gaps, not intimidating people,” said Mac Hardy, director of operations for the National Association of School Resource Officers. “When it’s done right, it’s the greatest form of community policing there is.”

Wake school officials worked with state lawmakers to pass a bill this month that will allow Apex High School’s school resource officer to remain with students when they temporarily relocate to a campus in Cary while their school is rebuilt. School officials said it was important to maintain the officer-student relationship.

Some activists have been calling for the removal of police from schools for several years, including filing a federal civil rights complaint in 2014 over Wake school policing practices. They renewed that call in January after the Rolesville High incident.

“Our kids need books, compensated teachers and food,” Stephanie Lormand, a Raleigh parent and member of the district’s Community Equity Leadership Team, told the school board on Tuesday. “They do not need cops.”

The new agreement is basically the same document that was revised in 2014 to sharply expand the rules governing police in schools. The changes made clear that school administrators are primarily responsible for handling discipline but that officers could intervene “in light of an actual or imminent threat to health or safety.”

The agreement says any use of force “shall not be excessive, arbitrary, or malicious.”

“If we’re doing it the right way, we are helping school administrators maintain a safe learning environment,” Hardy said.

The agreement also says school resource officers are supposed to receive training in areas such as working with students with disabilities and special needs, cultural competency and nondiscriminatory administration of school discipline.

Also starting in 2014, the agreement required law enforcement agencies to report the number of students – by race, gender and school – who are referred by school resource officers to the adult criminal justice system and juvenile petitions.

In the 2014-15 school year, black students accounted for 69 percent of the court referrals while making up 24 percent of Wake’s enrollment.

“Cops in schools increase arrests for black and brown students and this isn’t because white students don’t break the law,” Lormand said. “I promise that the behavior of white students would not hold up statistically or otherwise if it were examined with the same level of scrutiny given to their black and brown peers.”

The agreement approved Tuesday includes new wording that says police are to report on what offenses are charged against students and to list all referrals. The additional data will give a broader picture of who is being charged with what crimes.

But the overall lack of change drew complaints from some community activists, who complain it doesn’t require officers to document things such as when they restrain students.

“Despite national attention regarding concerns about the use of force against students in Wake County, no data is published or presumably even collected documenting the use of force, including Tasers, pepper spray, handcuffs, zip ties and other restraints against students, which we know is occurring,” said Gillooly of the ACLU.

The new agreement also doesn’t set minimum standards for school resource officers and instead leaves them up to individual law enforcement agencies, according to Gillooly.

After hearing the concerns, board members suggested some last-minute changes.

The board agreed to ask local law enforcement agencies if they’d support dropping the word “generally” in a sentence that says SROs “should generally not have any further involvement in routine disciplinary matters.” The change was suggested by board member Jim Martin.

The board was reluctant to act on member Keith Sutton’s suggestion on requiring all school resource officers to wear body cameras. But Sutton was told the district can look at his suggestions about defining what would be considered excessive force as part of the next agreement.

“I’m not looking to hold up the document as it is, but there could be more work to further define what we see as use of force or excessive or what have you,” Sutton said.

This story was originally published June 22, 2017 at 10:18 AM with the headline "Deal keeps police in Wake County schools, but some are unhappy."