There are now more police officers in Florida's schools than nurses -- and student arrests are rising

[teach1st]

There are now more police officers in Florida’s schools than nurses — and student arrests are rising
Washington Post, 9/3/2020

There are now more law enforcement officers in Florida’s K-12 schools than there are nurses, and arrests of students have jumped in the two years since legislators passed a law requiring that every school deploy a police officer or armed school employee, according to a new report.

During a single school year, 2018-2019, the number of youth arrests at school increased 8 percent even though communities around the schools saw a 12 percent decline in the number of youths arrested, the report said. And police officers arrested elementary-age kids 345 times, including an arrest of a 5-year-old and five arrests of 6-year-olds in that same year.

The authors of “The Cost of School Policing: What Florida’s students have paid for a pretense of security,” said there is “little consistent evidence” that the presence of law enforcement led to a drop in the number of student behavioral incidents, indicating that school-based law enforcement officers “were not necessarily making schools safer.”

The report also found:

✔ The percentage of youth arrests happening at school hit a five-year high of 20 percent.
✔ The number of students expelled from school increased 43 percent.
✔ For the first time ever, there are more police officers working in Florida schools — 3,650 — than there are school nurses, who number 2,286.
✔ The number of police officers in schools is more than double the number of school social workers (1,414) and school psychologists (1,452).
✔ Schools reported more than four times as many incidents of using physical restraints on students.

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[SamKnause]

1. This is a sick fucking twisted country.

[Dustlawyer]

2. Bad mix to add a bunch of cops to school, I know.

In 1979 I was in HS and had just left the lunch room to go to class when someone set off firecrackers in a garbage can. I went to my next class and was telling my teacher about them going off. Class started and then a knock at the door. I was called outside in the hall. When I walked out of the classroom door I was grabbed and thrown into the lockers, cuffed, and shoved into the lockers again. Then my teacher protested my innocence so a cop grabbed my arms which were cuffed behind me and lifted them up to smell my hands, forcing my head into the floor. The cop states he does not smell gunpowder. The assistant principle tells them to put me in his office. They leave my cuffed to his chair for an hour and a half. When he comes in his phone rings and I sit through a 10 minute call with his wife about a grocery list. He stops for a minute and tells me to leave. I motion to the handcuffs and he gets a cop to come in and u cuff me. I asked what is going on and they say they caught the kid who did it. No apology, no rights, no nothing.

[mitch96]

3. more police in Florida's schools and student arrests are rising

To a hammer, everything is a nail. To a cop, every student is a thug...
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