Reply to For everyone insisting MCPS reinstate SROs

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A student brought a loaded gun to a pgps the other day. Staff member found it, alerted sro, who confiscated it and called police. Seems the presence of sro might have helped police know the situation they were going to encounter. The SRO may also have had knowledge of kid/situation which seems like it would be useful. [/quote]

These stories touting SROs always lack enough detail to tell whether they were actually necessary to the good outcome. A staff member found the gun - would they not have been able to safely confiscate it without the SRO? Would they not have been able to call police and tell them the situation? If the story was something like "a kid was bragging about their loaded gun so a teacher called police while the SRO engaged the student safely, using their police training" then I would get it, but that's not what it sounds like happened?[/quote]

Teacher here. I have absolutely no training in guns. I wouldn’t know how to HOLD it properly. Frankly, that’s not my job. SROs have training I don’t have. I want them close, so they are only a minute away when I am alerted to a weapon in my classroom. I don’t want to have to call the police who then have to DRIVE to the school to help out.

Signed - a teacher who has had to call for an SRO to remove a weapon before [/quote]

Another teacher here who agrees with you. It seems like people really don't want teachers and school administrators to have support for dealing with theae situations. Ok. So we will call the police more often. [/quote]

People want teachers to have non-cop support for discipline and call cops for crimes.

Currently cops are disciplinarians for thing that are not crimes.[/quote]

Do you have evidence? Published data suggests otherwise. There were only 27 arrests during the 2019-2020 school year, all for felonious actions or ones that cause significant danger to the school environment. Those are crimes and they need to be treated as crimes. I think we can agree that isn’t a lot for the largest school system on Maryland, and it also suggests they are not arresting for things that are merely disciplinary.

I am a teacher AND a parent. I want administrative support for discipline and SRO support for crimes. [/quote]

No, there were 27 "physical arrests" in 2019-2020 made by SROs. The report you're citing says "A physical arrest is made by an SRO when the type of crime is serious in nature, a felony offense, or presents an immediate or continuing disruption or threat to the safety of others. A student who is 18 years old or older cannot be charged as a juvenile; therefore, a physical arrest is necessary since the case cannot be referred to the Department of Juvenile Justice. A physical arrest usually entails taking the student into custody, transporting the student to a police facility for processing, and making a notification to the Department of Juvenile Justice if the student is under the age of 18. Physical arrests accounted for 10% of all student arrests by SROs in the 2019-2020 School Year and equate to about 1 per high school."

So, let's say you're correct that those 27 arrests were for felonious actions or ones that cause significant danger (actually with so few, I'd have liked to see a breakdown of exactly what those arrests were for, because the definition appears to have some wiggle room in it, particularly "immediate or continuing disruption"). Those are the crimes you say you want SRO support for, but the report says those cases represent only 10% of student arrests by SROs.

The other 90% (242) were referred to as "paper" arrests, and while these students are not physically taken to the police station, their cases are referred to the Department of Juvenile Services. The transgressions ending up with "paper" arrests are described as "misdemeanors such as assaults, thefts, and vandalism". The report says "In almost all these cases, the student does not end up with a criminal record". They are very handy with exact figures elsewhere but we are left to wonder what "almost all" means here. Then there's a third category, for which they do not share numbers, called "civil citations", described as "minor violations that typically carry a monetary penalty. The vast majority of civil citations written are for alcohol, tobacco, and minor CDS offenses." CDS is not defined and the monetary penalties are not described.

You might say all of those things are crimes too - assault, theft, vandalism, illegal substances, CDS (whatever that is). But when we're speaking about children, what are we defining as assault, theft, vandalism, and who decides whether a fist fight is a crime worthy of referral to Juvenile Justice vs a disciplinary matter administrators can handle? I don't think we know at all how many of these events were "merely disciplinary".[/quote]

I read those paragraphs prior to posting the data. My point still stands. 27 arrests in a school system with over 160,000 students does not support the initial claim that “cops are disciplinarians for things that are not crimes.” Even if we look at the paragraph I didn’t mention, the “paper arrests,” you’ll notice they are STILL criminal activities in nature: assaults, thefts, vandalism, etc. We want police in school to assist with crimes. These are crimes. As for the “almost all,” it comes as no surprise to me that in some rare instances a student may end with a criminal record after committing a crime. I suppose you give no credit to the fact that the same report states most students with paper arrests don’t end up with a record? That right there suggests that an SRO’s presence in a school does not automatically lead to tons of juvenile records.

Administrators have other transgressions to deal with: academic dishonesty, tardiness, basic disrespect, technology misuse, etc. Those are disciplinary issues a school can and should handle. The ones above? They should be the domain of an SRO.[/quote]

Assaults, thefts, and vandalism are crimes by definition, but no 15 year old should be arrested, on paper or otherwise, for carving their name into a desk, or getting into your average, no deadly weapons involved fistfight, or stealing the stapler from the teacher's desk, but those could all be defined as crimes, if one was so inclined. I'm trying to think of a "mere disciplinary" issue that _couldn't_ be defined as a crime. [/quote]

+1[/quote]

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