(NewsReady.com) – After George Floyd’s murder by former Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officers, there was a social justice movement across the nation. Schools across the country ended their contracts with the police. Now, some of those officials are backpedaling.
At least 50 districts, serving more than 1.7 million students, ended or cut finding from their school policing programs from May 2020 through June 2022. The David Douglas District in Portland, Oregon, disbanded its school policing program, impacting nearly 10,000 kids. In February 2021, Los Angeles County cut 133 positions from its LA Schools Police Department, and officers are no longer on campus.
Despite these moves, however, not all school districts continued to prohibit police in their schools. Some found out the hard way that it was a bad idea. In January 2022, there was a school shooting at Magruder High School in Montgomery County, Maryland. A student was shot in the bathroom and seriously hurt. The victim’s family sued the county for ending its program with the police. The district of more than 160,000 students has since reversed course.
In 2021, a school shooting injured a 12-year-old boy at Pomona High School in California. The child recovered from his injuries, but the incident spurred officials to take action and right their wrong. The next month, the school district reversed its decision to remove police.
In March 2023, a student shot two administrators who were patting him down in Denver. He later killed himself. The district decided to bring school resource officers back after the incident. Denver Public Schools Board of Education member Scott Baldermann told The Washington Times that officials were seeing a “spike in the number of weapons coming into school.” The district created a system allowing the superintendent to decide where to place the officers.
In Washington, DC, resource officers are being phased out, and officials are also seeing more weapons brought into schools. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) has repeatedly asked the city council to restore funding for officers in schools, but they refuse.
“It’s all about politics,” Jacque Patterson, a member of the DC school board, told the Times.
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