Reply to ACPS and city council re: SROs

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you support SROs you a racist Republican and deserve no peace in this city.[/quote]

Actually many progressive folks and POC in the city who actually work with the kids wanted the SROs to stay, and many students did as well. Folks let the national conversation (which is important and should continue) punish as police department that was actually doing something right. I don't know how we expect law enforcement to change if we don't acknowledge and encourage meaningful reform.
Read this article.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/alexandria-school-police-removal/2021/06/23/cf167a2a-cdfb-11eb-a7f1-52b8870bef7c_story.html

Highlights...
Oscar Cortez, 16, was one of dozens of students who played on the soccer team the two police officers had started three years ago, primarily to serve the low-income Hispanic students they had hoped to reach when they applied to become SROs. Speaking in Spanish, Oscar asked the officers whether they would be leading a soccer team this summer. The officers had canceled the spring season because of the pandemic. Larios said he wasn’t sure yet.

Oscar traced a circle on the sidewalk with his toe. He had another question.

“Is it true,” he asked, still speaking in Spanish, “that you’re leaving us?”

Argueta came up with the makeshift window shade as a form of deterrence after colleagues complained about the constant crowd of students gathering outside. He also put up a sign warning, “NO STUDENTS ALLOWED WITHOUT A PASS,” and tacked on eight exclamation marks.

But kids kept showing up, flashing scribbled-on scraps of paper they insisted bore their teachers’ signatures.

Most just wanted to talk. But, over the course of a typical year, a handful came to report stolen Chromebooks or cellphones. Larios and Argueta would review security footage to identify the culprit, then hand the case to an administrator, because SROs do not get involved in disciplinary matters.

Nor do they play a role in student suspensions, said Peter Balas, the principal of T.C. Williams. In fact, most functions that people assume school police perform — such as breaking up fights — actually fall under the purview of administrators or the separate security force that Alexandria employs. SROs take action only when a student engages in criminal activity, Balas said, such as threatening peers with a weapon or bringing drugs or alcohol to school.

This happens rarely: Alexandria’s five SROs — the three others are stationed in the system’s three middle schools — made six arrests in the 2019-20 school year. These kinds of interactions took up a small fraction of Larios and Argueta’s time at school, they said.

Balas, the principal, said he has received only two complaints about the officers during their tenure at T.C., neither from students. Both came from parents who disliked the way Larios and Argueta handled criminal incidents involving their children. Citing the families’ desire for privacy, Balas would not elaborate.

Larios and Argueta said they used to hear occasional mutterings of “F--- the police” as students walked into school, back when they started. But those faded away quickly, they said.[/quote]

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