City Council mulls report card for school safety agents
They make up the fifth largest police force in the country. But it isn’t organized crime or drug lords that these police officials have their eye on. They’re focused on the teenage students who attend public school in New York City.
With 5,249 officers charged with security at more than 1,500 public schools, the New York Police Department’s school safety division is larger than the police forces of Washington D.C., Dallas or Detroit – and their presence is palpable for some students.
“I see about 30 to 35 cops just on my side of the school building,” said Chasity Soriano, a 15-year-old student of the Bushwick School for Social Justice. She claimed that three years ago she was handcuffed to a chair in the school’s main office for arguing with a friend.
“[The school safety agents] told me to shut up and relax and not to move,” said the Queens resident, adding, “they portrayed me as an animal.”
The City Council will soon vote on the Student Safety Act, a bill that would require quarterly reporting by the Department of Education and NYPD to the City Council on school safety and disciplinary issues, including incidents involving arrests and suspensions of students. The act, introduced by Councilmember Robert Jackson in August 2008 is seen as a first step in keeping a tighter check on policing in schools.
“Right now, there’s no formal mechanism to report misconduct by school safety agents, people have to go to great lengths to complain about them,” said Jen Carnig, director of communications at the New York Civil Liberties Union. The NYPD received 2,670 complaints against school safety agents between 2002 and 2007, according to a 2007 letter Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent to the City Council’s education committee.
NYPD officials say they would require more than 100 additional personnel to handle complaints, investigations and the record-keeping responsibilities if the Student Safety Act is passed. “At a time when the City’s resources are under severe strain, we suggest the enactment of Intro 816-A (the Student Safety Act) as written would compromise our ability to maintain safety and security in the City’s public schools,” wrote Assistant Chief James Secreto, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s School Safety Division, in a Nov. 10 statement before the City Council.
In the past six years, amid dwindling education budgets and increased pressure to raise test scores, schools have seen a 65 percent increase in the school safety division. This is because it’s easier to refer disruptive students to the police and the courts instead of working with them in a collaborative manner, say NYCLU members. Moreover, this quick-fix solution has come with a price-tag of $221 million.
Shoshi Doza, a youth organizer for Jackson Heights-based South Asian non-profit Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) asserts that many parents and students complain to her about aggressive policing in schools. “There’s a lack of training of police officials on how to deal with youth,” she said.
Students, many under the age of 16, have been arrested for non-criminal violations such as disruptive conduct, say NYCLU members. However, no clear data on arrests has been made available by the police.
The NYCLU claims that NYPD consistently ignores or unreasonably delays Freedom of Information Law requests on police-student interactions. The Department of Education also delayed providing information on student suspensions and discharges for almost a year and even then furnished only a partial response, the NYCLU says.
The Student Safety Act would require such information to be made available easily through periodic reports to the City Council and DOE.
Although Secreto acknowledges receiving 1,159 complaints of “misconduct or other type of incidents involving school safety agents,” in 2008 he says only 15 percent of that number actually alleged unnecessary force, abuse of authority, discourtesy or offensive language.
The department also points to statistics that indicate the need for school safety agents. Since the functions of the Board of Education’s Division of School Safety were transferred to the Police Department in 1998, total crime in schools has dropped by 34 percent over nine years ending in the 2008-2009 school year, Secreto told the City Council. Furthermore, since September, total crime has decreased by an additional 27 percent from the year prior, violent crime dropped by 22 percent, non-criminal incidents fell by 29 percent, and the possession of weapons and “dangerous instruments” declined by 32 percent.
“These dramatic decreases are of course attributable to the hard work of many people,” Secreto said, “but it is clear that the school safety agents are the backbone of school security.” He refuted claims that these officers are inadequately trained to deal with youth, saying they go through a comprehensive 14-week training course upon being hired.
Rooting out unauthorized visitors, removing unruly students and taking enforcement action when necessary are required to maintain order in schools, the NYPD says. It cites a 2009 Department of Education survey showing that 76 percent of students and 92 percent of teachers feel safe in their schools, while 93 percent of parents believe their children are safe as well.
But Udi Ofer, advocacy director at the NYCLU, said he believes police training is inadequate to meet the developmental needs of students and those with disabilities.
“Police officers and school safety agents are trained to utilize aggressive street policing tactics that are inappropriate for schools,” Ofer said.
Every morning as Chanwatie Ramnauth, 15, walks onto the school grounds of Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens, she faces a gauntlet of metal detectors, both at the entrance and in the hallway of the school.
Secreto emphasizes that scanning is an invaluable tool in schools, claiming it, “routinely results in the discovery and seizure of hundreds of dangerous weapons each year.”
However, NYCLU members argue that a vast majority of items confiscated at metal detectors are not weapons or “dangerous instruments.” Most of the time, the detectors pick up cellphones and iPods.
While walking down the school hall one day last September, Ramnauth said she saw a fight break out. “The police pushed me into the wall, and I banged my hand really hard, but I didn’t know where to complain,” she said at a 75-person strong rally supporting the Student Safety Act on the steps of City Hall in October. Wearing glasses, braces and bright blue polish on her fingernails, she claimed that the school safety agents commit “both verbal and physical assaults.”
Students of color, students with special needs and immigrants are disproportionately harassed by school safety agents, according to DRUM members. They add that children of undocumented workers find it particularly difficult to approach the police.
“There’s definitely a form of bias,” said Doza, DRUM’s youth organizer. “Muslim students especially may be laughed at during searches by school safety agents.”
Secreto, however, countered that approximately 70 percent of school safety agents are women while about 93 percent are black or Hispanic, adding that, “Virtually all of our school safety agents are city residents, and many are parents with children in the city’s public schools.”
But the NYCLU says that, unlike other school employees, most school safety agents do not participate in anti-bias and sensitivity trainings that could help them handle students.
The Student Safety Act originally contained a provision to extend the jurisdiction of the Civilian Complaint Review Board to give the public the same right to complain against police behavior in the schools as on the streets. However, this was later removed from the bill.
“It’s all part of the negotiation process,” explains Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan, who supports the Student Safety Act.
Secreto is a critic of NYCLU’s efforts to instruct the public on how to make a complaint against a school safety agent. “This type of campaign invites students who may be the subjects of necessary action by student safety agents to make retaliatory complaints, in a manner that could serve to chill the very actions that are necessary to keeping the school safe and orderly,” Secreto said.
NYPD officials also believe that a portion of the Student Safety Act will authorize the City Council to go beyond its oversight role, because it would mandate that school safety agents with more than one complaint against them would be reported to the council.
Gregory Floyd, President of Teamsters Local 237, the union representing the school safety agents, takes a much softer approach toward the bill than the NYPD.
“This is valuable information for the public, and Local 237 supports this type of statistical reporting,” he said to the City Council. He said he is concerned however that the act “unfairly singles out school safety agents as wrongdoers.” He accuses the NYCLU of “urging” students to complain of harassment by distributing leaflets at schools.
The leaflets explain to students their rights. For example, it advises students in trouble not to “run away from a student safety agent” and to ask for a lawyer if they are arrested.
This summer, the NYCLU along with the Annenberg Institute for Social Reform and Make the Road New York released a report on six schools in New York City that were exploring ways to solve student discipline problems without schools safety agents and metal detectors.
Students in these schools were allowed to help frame school rules in order to help them understand their role in keeping order. The principals in these schools were also more empowered to make decisions on discipline, according to the report. NYCLU members claim the experiment was successful.
“We’re keen to see principals play a larger role than police personnel in school safety,” said Oona Chatterjee of Make the Road New York, one of the 19 organizations that is a part of the Student Safety Coalition pushing for the Student Safety Act.
