(Previously published in WND.)
After every school shooting, anti-gun activists call for more restrictions on our Second Amendment rights. When Democrats were in the street rioting after George Floyd’s death, a common cry was “Defund the Police.”
Since school systems are predominantly run by liberals, it should come as no surprise that they also took up the call. Many of them, particularly those in major cities run by Democrats, reduced their budgets for school resource officers. The Washington Times reported that nearly three dozen school systems eliminated them entirely. Among these were Oakland, California, and Columbus, Ohio.
Their rationale in many cases was that the school resource officers were biased against students of color. “The American Civil Liberties Union cited 2017 data showing that non-white students had disproportionate interactions with in-school police and were more likely than their white counterparts to face legal troubles on school grounds,” according to the Washington Times. (This data has been disputed by other studies.)
It should also come as no surprise that, like residents of major cities, school systems are regretting their knee-jerk reaction.
“The void of campus police has been filled by disorder and violence,” the Washington Times reported. “Without law enforcement, many districts have found wild fights, rampant drug use and an alarming number of guns and knives on school grounds.”
“We were seeing a spike in the number of weapons coming into school, and we needed to take a proactive approach to addressing that,” Scott Baldermann, a member of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education, told the Washington Times.
Now, many of those school systems are restoring funding for school resource officers.
Baldermann supported removing officers from Denver schools in 2020, but after a student shot two administrators in 2021, he and the board had a change of heart. They didn’t bring back school resource officers for every school, but they allowed the school superintendent to decide which schools needed them.
Other school systems like Washington, D.C., Montgomery County, Maryland, and Alexandria, Virginia, experienced similar woes, such as shootings, arrests and violence.
Sadly, it took them not having something before they learned to appreciate it.
Some places still aren’t convinced.
Madison, Wisconsin, still wants to believe that social justice programs will keep students safe. They use “restorative justice” and psychology to uncover the “root problems” of a child’s behavioral issues.
The YMCA Madison provides the counselors for the program. Eugenia Highland-Granados with the YMCA Madison told the Washington Times that police in schools creates a culture that “perpetuates punishment and fear and racism … all these systems of oppression.”
The restorative justice program isn’t working, though, as parents, students and teachers are concerned about fighting and drug use.
Highland-Granados, however, says that it isn’t that the program isn’t working, it’s that it needs more social justice workers in the school.
Schools like those in Madison are risking children’s lives to do their social engineering experiments. Those running the programs can’t imagine they are wrong, and since their children aren’t at risk, they willing to continue doubling down on failed ideas.
Meanwhile, most school systems have learned from their mistakes. Police aren’t the problem. A culture that praises criminals and lawlessness is.
