PUNJABI VERSION - ਪੁਿ ਲਸ ਰਿਹਤ ਸਕੂਲ, ਸੁਰ ੱਿਖਅਤ ਸਕੂਲ ਹਨ -
https://forms.gle/mhS6KGUcfqv29ch66FRENCH VERSION - Les écoles sans police sont les écoles plus sécuritaires -
https://forms.gle/3FaNdYnTvAt34ReX8SPANISH VERSION - Escuelas Libres de Policía son Escuelas más Seguras -
https://forms.gle/pxXW3aJCgDoALcvN9CHINESE VERSION - 無警察的校園是更安全的校園 -
https://forms.gle/9wemkbtpR1V3kVW77Recent high-profile murders of Black and Indigenous people by police officers in both the US(1) and Canada(2) have catalyzed a much-needed public conversation(3) about systemic racism, especially anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism. Unprecedented demonstrations in major cities around the world form the backdrop to growing calls to question the role and mandate of the police(4) in our society. We owe it to children and youth to carry forward these important conversations into schools.
As parents, educators, and community members, we want schools to be places where all children and youth feel welcome, safe, and valued. We want to believe that this is already the case, but many Black, Indigenous, and racialized students and their families do not feel safe at schools where police are present. Recent research demonstrates the ineffectiveness and negative impacts of SLOs in schools. We call for the immediate end to School Liaison Officer Programs and the redirection of investments into community-led programs in schools.
Whatever we wish to be true about the police, the roots of modern policing are grounded in harm. As policing expert Robyn Maynard observes, the RCMP was created to clear the plains as part of the project of Indigenous genocide.(5) The ongoing racism and abuses of power in these institutions today is well documented. BC has the highest rate of police-involved deaths per capita in the country.(6) Further, Indigenous and Black communities are over-represented in racial profiling and carding practices,(7) as well as in prisons.(8) In 2017, Indigenous people accounted for over 16% of street checks, despite making up 2% of Vancouver’s population, and Black people accounted for 5% of street checks, despite accounting for only 1% of the population.(9)
It is thus not surprising that SLOs are disproportionately placed in schools with more Black, Indigenous, marginalized, and low-income students,(10) who already experience over-policing. Police can enter classrooms without a teacher’s consent, and they are involved in everything from school trips to career days to clubs targeted at low-income students. Different cultural codes and normative teen behaviour such as gathering in groups is labelled as threatening or deviant by SLOs in these contexts, resulting in heightened levels of surveillance and students being labelled as “high risk” and consequently criminalized as part of the school-to-prison pipeline. The Canadian Pediatric Society recently stated that “racism is a social determinant of health that undermines adolescent development and has a profound and lifelong impact on youth and their health status.”(11) If school boards and trustees truly care about the wellbeing of all students, they must address the negative impacts that police presence in schools has on racialized students.
Take, for example, the testimony of secondary student Haleluya Hailu. As she writes in Burnaby Now: “As a black woman, as a student and, at the end of the day, just a person. Going back to my half-empty classrooms, the last thing I want to see is a RCMP officer staring back at me. If you feel reassured by a badge and a gun, that is a privilege that I wish I could have.”(12)
Given the experiences of Haleluya and other racialized and marginalized youth in BC,(13, 14) as well as recent statements by the Canadian Pediatric Society(15) and the Toronto Board of Health(16) on the detrimental impacts of racism, we must turn our attention to the growing body of research indicating that there is no compelling evidence for the benefit of having SLOs in the public school system at all. We must also critically reflect on our priorities and values when, despite continued cuts to the educational system and the clear dangers of police presence, SLOs have steadily become permanent fixtures in the BC school system. These changes have not made our students safer. As activist and intellectual Sandra Hudson notes, “this systematic defunding of education has resulted in less teachers and counselors in school [...] Adults trained to support children and youth have now been replaced with police, who are instead meant to control students.”(17)
As we move towards a more just society, removing police from schools is a reasonable, common sense proposal that already has traction. First off, not all schools have a police presence. Of those that do, the precedent for removing police from public schools exists: the Toronto District School Board ended the police presence in schools in 2017(18) and other school districts have since followed suit.(19) In Vancouver in the same year, an Indigenous mother, Chrisse Oleman, took action with a group of concerned caregivers and community members after the Vancouver Police Department began to show up in her children’s East Vancouver school. She didn’t want police presence to be normalized in her children’s school because she knew all too well the ways in which the police have both failed to protect and harmed Indigenous people.(20) The group succeeded, and as a result, the VPD are no longer invited into the school for assemblies and community events.
Oleman encourages other parents to organize in their own school communities as well. “All too soon, our precious children will not be so cute anymore and they will be viewed as a threat, a menace, and the majority of them will begin to ‘fit a description.’” Oleman cautions that normalizing police presence in schools as a neutral force is a legitimate safety issue, and that “parents should not back down no matter what anybody says. People are going to try to put a positive spin on the situation, but we need to keep the core issue of safety in mind.”
As parents, educators, and community members, we want schools to be places where all children and youth feel welcome, safe, and valued. We thus call on you to advocate for an immediate end to School Liaison Officer programs and, in direct consultation with school communities - particularly Black and Indigenous parents and students – to create community-led programs that take a restorative and trauma-informed approach to creating safety and well-being for all students.
