Disability Futures

Two weeks ago, civil rights groups in Richmond, Virginia, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education over the treatment of black students in local schools. The district’s black students are disproportionately targeted by police officers who work in the schools, the complaint alleges. One student in the complaint, a 13-year-old with disabilities named J.R., was violently restrained on the ground by a school-based police officer for allegedly clenching his hands into fists.  

One week ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a similar complaint with the Department of Education and Department of Justice on behalf of students in Pinellas, Florida. Many kids in Pinellas County Schools are victims of discriminatory police practices, the complaint alleges, under which black students and students with disabilities are disproportionately arrested and subjected to police methods like pepper spray.

These complaints come nearly a year after a school-based police officer at Spring Valley High School flipped a student out of her chair in South Carolina; half a year after a school-based police officer was caught hitting a child in Baltimore; and five months after a video showed a school-based police officer in Texas body-slamming a 12-year-old girl to the ground. 

These troubling examples are just some of the ways that putting police in schools can have disastrous effects. On Thursday, the Department of Education and Department of Justice announced a new tool designed to address some of these issues.