Letter: Do the Police Belong in Our Public Schools?

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Re "With Police in Schools, More Children in Court" (front page, April 12): Stationing police officers in public schools clearly causes the criminalization of routine misbehavior. Last school year, 882 students were arrested in New York City public schools. Another 1,666 children were issued tickets. These children's "crimes" ranged from drawing graffiti to possessing marijuana. Serious felony arrests were rare.

But the introduction of our children to the criminal justice system is only one of the harms resulting from the introduction of the police into our schools; it also subjects children to unnecessarily violent and frightening confrontations with the police.

The New York Civil Liberties Union's class-action lawsuit challenging the N.Y.P.D.'s aggressive presence in New York City schools includes numerous incidents in which children were needlessly manhandled, slammed against walls and thrown to the floor in incidents that began as minor disciplinary infractions.

Police officers in city schools are guided by policies and practices that may be suitable for fighting crime on the streets but are completely inappropriate for working with children in a learning environment. By ignoring the important differences between patrolling the streets and monitoring school hallways, a police presence can make schools less safe for students.

Ultimately, authority over school safety belongs in the hands of professional educators, who possess the skills and the training to manage children effectively.

ALEXIS KARTERON
Senior Staff Attorney
New York Civil Liberties Union
Hempstead, N.Y., April 12, 2013

To the Editor:

There are alternatives to meting out punishment that treats our schoolchildren like criminals. Instead of sending students to the principal's office or worse — calling the police into classrooms to handle disorderly conduct — schools can equip their teachers with tools proved to defuse disruption before it takes over.

Practices developed by Dr. Geoff Colvin at the University of Oregon, for example, enable teachers to manage and correct antisocial behavior before it escalates into something unsafe for everyone. And cooperative learning techniques not only encourage children to work with one another, but they also build trust and communication skills that cut down fights.

The key is training every adult in a school, not just a few, and the children as well, in these strategies that create a safe and healthy learning environment for all. We want children to spend more time in the classroom learning, not in lockdown.

PAMELA CANTOR
New York, April 17, 2013

The writer, a psychiatrist, is president and chief executive of Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit that works with low-performing public schools.