So instead of having them change their behavior, they’d rather them just not be arrested?
Via Red Alert Politics:
A coalition of progressive organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Advancement Project, the Alliance for Educational Justice, and the Dignity in Schools Campaign, is arguing that adding additional police officers, including those with guns, to schools throughout the country only further the current ‘school-to-prison’ culture currently found in many of our country’s urban schools.
“Enhanced police presence in schools is not a panacea for preventing the violence we saw in Newton, Connecticut. Instead, adding police and armed security to schools often means that normal student behavior becomes criminalized. The negative consequences of increased police activity is felt most sharply in schools with large numbers of African-American and poor children,” stated Damon Hewitt, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Education Practice Group, on a conference call this morning to discuss a report issued by the coalition on the subject.
Hewitt claimed on the call that 42 percent of the students currently referred to law enforcement in the United States – and 35 percent of those arrested by police officers on school grounds – are African-American.