[RD] Policing High-Fives

There's some great stuff in this thread.

"Police are all horrendous and disgusting and I hate them all. They have no connection or empathy with those that they police, and those that they police (including me) feel exactly the same way about them. There are significant barriers between the two groups. Until this situation is resolved and the barriers come down and we can all start seeing each other as people and having some level of care towards each other, the barriers between us must be kept in place."

Fantastic attitude.
 
Just the other day I heard on a radio program that there are around 17,000 police officers in K-12 schools in this country. I have no idea how many K-12 schools there are.

Doing what? Outreach? Patrolling the halls?

17,000 police officers doing outreach seems like overkill. But police officers patrolling elementary schools seems.. insane
 
Doing what? Outreach? Patrolling the halls?

17,000 police officers doing outreach seems like overkill. But police officers patrolling elementary schools seems.. insane
Patrolling, yes. There are some fun videos of grown men with guns throwing 14-year-old girls to the ground around the web, if you're into that sort of thing. A school district in California got a dozen assault rifles and one of those armored vehicles from the Dept of Defense a few years ago. They also got 3 grenade launchers, but they decided those were too much and returned them.
 
I'm pretty happy my sister and her husband just moved back to Canada from the U.S. No way would I want her future kids to grow up in a place where police regularly patrol elementary schools.

Coming soon to a Canadian school near you:

http://www.nwpolice.org/community-services/school-liaison-officers/

Even a big city like Milwaukee has only 1 officer for the middle schools and 1 officer for the high schools. All this talk of 'patrolling elementary schools' is overblown.
 
Coming soon to a Canadian school near you:

http://www.nwpolice.org/community-services/school-liaison-officers/

Even a big city like Milwaukee has only 1 officer for the middle schools and 1 officer for the high schools. All this talk of 'patrolling elementary schools' is overblown.

Summary of your link:

School Liaison Offers also educate youth on safety issues, foster positive relationships between youth and police, increase awareness among youth of their responsibility to the community, and provide them with the knowledge and confidence needed to make safe and responsible choices.

and

Kindergarten to Grade 3: Stranger danger, general safety awareness, teasing and personal safety.

Grade 4 to Grade 6: Internet safety, social media awareness and bullying.

Grade 7 to Grade 10: Social media awareness, internet safety, bullying, drug education.

Grade 11 to Grade 12: Social media awareness, internet safety, bullying, drinking and driving, drug education, and dating violence.

All sounds good to me! What I was speaking out against in my last post is an educational environment that's so bad you need cops patrolling the hallways.
 
I have serious concerns about the prevalence and use of police officers as school resource officers, that is those police assigned to schools as in-house officers responsible for crime prevention and public safety. While such officers may be necessary for public safety reasons in some unfortunate schools, I suspect the proliferation of school resource officers in many schools is unnecessary and probably runs counter to pedagogical goals. I also suspect the presence of school resource officers in some schools may strain relations between the public being served and the police. The heavy presence of school resource officers seems to have a tendency to escalate discipline issues into issues for the police.

I do not have the same concerns about the police giving elementary students high-fives and playing with them at recess.
 
How many of those 17000 are actually patrolling, or just giving a demonstration such as what was shown in the Canadian police link? A poster on CFC saying so because he can bring up one or two bad instances isn't very convincing. We aren't even sure of the accuracy of this 17k figure (actually I'm finding it is higher than that, much higher for liaison/resource officer...still doesn't mean all of them are patrolling the hallways.) Yet we have these really rare events. There have been more school shootings than these police misconduct cases. How many school shootings occurred with a police officer in the school?

Edit:
Are they patrolling Toronto school hallways?

https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/cntrng-crm/plcng/cnmcs-plcng/ndx/snpss-en.aspx?n=71
 
Probably depends on what portion of the seventeen thousand are school resource officers, those who do that patrolling, versus the number that are performing other actions. The National Association of School Resource Officers estimates there are between fourteen and twenty thousand SROs. So seventeen thousand sounds like a reasonable number.
 
Bamspeedy, reading that link it sounds like the cop is in the school as an "ambassador" of sorts. It doesn't mention patrols, but I suppose that does not mean they are excluded.

That's what many of the US resource officers are as well. Some do indeed patrol, I won't deny that, just how many is unknown. If they are there as ambassadors and a teacher feels an officer needs to be called, should she call the ambassador or 911? (if the ambassador is otherwise a fully trained policer officer). Can't really say the ambassador was 'on patrol' than, can you?

The high number I found was:

Some 43% of all U.S. public schools -- including 63% of middle and 64% of high schools -- had such officers on their grounds during the 2013-2014 school year, the National Center for Education Statistics noted in May. This includes more than 46,000 full-time and 36,000 part-time officers.

edit: link added http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/us/south-carolina-school-resource-officers/

'on the grounds during the year', so in the school for one day counts. 'full time/part time' does this mean they were in the school full or part time, or they were a full or part time officer that did spend some time in the school? (works 40 hours a week in the city, but 2 of those hours he spends in the school). Would be interesting to get more details on this.
 
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When I was in highschool we had a security guard who we barely saw but that's about it. If I had kids and the school I was about to sign them up for had an on-duty police officer who's job it was to patrol the grounds, I would quickly start looking for a new school. To me that implies that the area is too dangerous for my kids.

An "ambassador" could just be a guy who does presentations for kids and teaches them stuff. Which I don't mind. But if patrolling duties are involved, it would also make me question sending my kids there.
 
When I was in highschool we had a security guard who we barely saw but that's about it. If I had kids and the school I was about to sign them up for had an on-duty police officer who's job it was to patrol the grounds, I would quickly start looking for a new school. To me that implies that the area is too dangerous for my kids.

An "ambassador" could just be a guy who does presentations for kids and teaches them stuff. Which I don't mind. But if patrolling duties are involved, it would also make me question sending my kids there.

Then if in the US send your kids to one of the most rural schools. Even cities with 50k people have them.

http://lacrossetribune.com/news/the...cle_b8da70f2-8ea4-5b00-9b64-b3a7670bcd78.html

(Note this article was 14 years ago). He does patrol the hallways. Catching kids smoking and skipping classes, are you worried for your kid's safety for that? Sometimes breaks up fights amongst students, and confiscated knives (and a BB gun).
 
Yea, pretty sure we spent the money that would go toward that sort of thing on bus routes instead. People aren't cool with the lack of controlled access anymore though. I think the newer constructed K-5 building has like locked doors and buzzer access and stuff now. The high school and middle schools are still probably open access/unguarded. Confiscating knives though! I guess that makes sense, but the entire FFA chapter would have lost a pocketknife if you started asking them for them.

I have no idea.

I guess I can be corrected if somebody knows the comics better, but I'm thinking it would be "take off his helmet and fraternize."
 
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(Note this article was 14 years ago). He does patrol the hallways. Catching kids smoking and skipping classes, are you worried for your kid's safety for that? Sometimes breaks up fights amongst students, and confiscated knives (and a BB gun).

Definitely, if there is a cop on the premises who's job it is to patrol the premises, then to me that signifies that several incidents must have occurred in the past to warrant that, or the school is in a bad enough part of town.

If it's just a regular ole security guard, then that's normal and I wouldn't care. A cop patrolling a school is definitely not normal.
 
I think the newer constructed K-5 building has like locked doors and buzzer access and stuff now. The high school and middle schools are still probably open access/unguarded. Confiscating knives though! I guess that makes sense, but the entire FFA chapter would have lost a pocketknife if you started asking them for them.

You don't need a new building to add locked doors and buzzer access to the doors. I live in a town of 3500 and both the K-5 and the middle/high school has them. Can't lock people in for safety reasons so kids can still get out in the event of fire or something, and it can't stop people from opening a door to let someone in that shouldn't be there or to bring something in they shouldn't.
 
I suppose that's probably true. Just seems weird.
 
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