“They’re treating us like criminals, like we’re
animals.”
-- Student at Curtis High School, Staten Island, New York City
“Sometimes the classroom feels like
a jail cell.”
-- Jane Min, Flushing High School, Queens, New York City
Imagine if schools were places where children are treated like
the precious people they are - where their creativity, their
curiosity, and their critical thinking were valued and encouraged.
Imagine if, in school and out of school, our youths were challenged
and unleashed and they were called upon to discuss and debate
everything from Shakespeare to religion, from the state of the
planet to how society - including their own schools - should
be run. Imagine if the rebellious spirit and questioning of our
children were not only not squashed and corralled; imagine
if it were valued as a crucial part of revolutionizing society.
But in this society, we can only imagine
this. And for way too many young people, the experience is
exactly the opposite. Schools
are ringed with fences and metal detectors. Instead of the sounds
of debate and lively discussion over string theory or globalization,
the hallways ring with echoes of cops, Glocks at their hips,
screaming to the students to "Get the fuck back in line!"
When kids come to school, instead of knowing they are coming
to a safe place where they will learn and be learned from, they
live with fear: will they be frisked and humiliated in front
of everyone for no real reason? Will they be arrested if they
wander out of the metal detector line? Will they make it home
at the end of the day, or will they be taken to jail for swearing
or getting into a fight?
An important report, Criminalizing
the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools,
was released by the New York Civil Liberties Union in March
2007. It covers the experience of students in New York City,
but it provides an all-too-rare glimpse at the experience
of young people all over this country, particularly Black
and Latino children - the harassment, degradation, brutalization,
and criminalization that they are forced to endure when they
come to school. The report is drawn from interviews with
parents, teachers, school administrators and staff, and,
importantly, surveys from 1,000 students in New York City
schools.
In New York City, the public schools have
been policed by the NYPD since 1998. In the 2005-2006 school
year, there were a total
of 4,625 cops (200 of them armed) patrolling the schools as so-called “School
Safety Agents (SSAs).” The NYCLU report points out that
if the NYPD’s School Safety Division were its own police
force, it would be the 10th largest in the country - larger than
the entire police force in Washington, D.C., Detroit, or Boston.
Cops as School Prison Guards
In New York City, the number of police in schools has jumped
from 3,000 to 5,000 in less than ten years - but the increasing
criminalization of our children is a phenomenon all over this
country. This wasting and squandering of human potential, this
dehumanizing girls and boys, is unacceptable and intolerable.
We could have an entirely different society, a society where
there is no need at all for schools with state-sanctioned armed
thugs, jacking up and locking down students.
Under the school “safety” program, any junior high
and high school in the New York public school system is subject
to “roving metal detectors.” What this has meant
is cops coming into schools unannounced, setting up a military-style
task force. In an approach very similar to what U.S. soldiers
do in Iraq, the cops swarm in, take over the school's cafeteria
or gym, and turn the school into a police zone, snaked with lines
of students waiting to pass through the metal detectors.
Students are forced to wait for hours in
line as their bags are searched and their cell phones (prohibited
in the school
district) or cameras (not prohibited) are confiscated. And 21
percent of the city's junior high and high schools now have metal
detectors permanently installed. At Wadleigh Secondary School
in Manhattan, one student who found a “roving” metal
detector at his school called his mother to come pick up his
phone before it was confiscated - and was then arrested when
he tried to explain why he wasn't waiting in line.
These cops in the schools act like, and
basically function as, prison guards: barking orders, pushing
and shoving students,
deciding arbitrarily what is and is not allowed on any given
day. Students' bags are searched, and everything from house keys
to spare change is confiscated. The cops decide what they will
and won't let students bring into schools. For example, some
students who had permission to carry cell phones had them taken.
Some students had their iPods confiscated and never returned.
And at an aviation magnet high school, students had their engineering
supplies taken for supposedly being “weapons.”
Cops have confiscated students' food and
then eaten it. Students are routinely yelled at and cursed
at, and have reported being
physically shoved through the metal detectors or shoved against
the wall to be frisked, regardless of whether they set off the
metal detectors. At one school, the cops taunted one student
who was wearing a nice coat, accusing him of stealing it. When
one cop found a blank CD in a student's backpack he said, “Is
that rap? That's probably why you're being searched.” In
one eight-month period more than 17,000 items were taken from
students in the “roving” metal detector program -
70 percent of them were cell phones, and 29 percent were iPods
and similar items. Not one gun was found.
The NYCLU report detailed numerous instances
where the cops actively terrorized and brutalized students.
At one school, cops
chased students who tried to avoid the checkpoints, screaming, “Round
them up!” At Samuel Tilden High School in Brooklyn, a 17-year-old
student named Biko Edwards was walking toward his chemistry class
when a vice principal stopped him. When Biko protested not being
allowed to go to class, the vice principal called in a cop. The
report describes what happened next:
“Officer Rivera then grabbed Biko and slammed him against
a brick door divider, lacerating Biko’s face and causing
him to bleed. Officer Rivera then sprayed Mace at Biko’s
eyes and face, causing Biko’s eyes to burn. Rather than
treat the student, Officer Rivera then called for back-up on
his radio, and proceeded to handcuff Biko… [He]was taken
to a hospital where he spent approximately two hours being
treated for his wounds, and spending most of his time in the
hospital handcuffed to a chair… He faces five criminal
charges.”
And what happens to young women in these
schools - are they places where young women are treated as
human beings with value
and intelligence, and not as a collection of body parts? Are
the schools themselves a place where young women and men are
encouraged to debate the oppression of women, and called upon
to solve it? No - the schools are places where women are harassed
and groped by the armed enforcers of the state. One student reported
that “the police like to put their hands on kids without
reason.” And 27 percent of students surveyed reported that
officers touched or treated them in a way that made them feel
uncomfortable. Young women whose underwire bras set off the metal
detectors reported they were forced to lift up their shirts,
supposedly to prove they weren't carrying any weapons, or to
unzip or unbuckle their pants supposedly to prove they weren't
concealing cell phones. Young women have been searched by male
officers, and the report says, “students and teachers alike
complain that male SSAs subject girls to inappropriate behavior,
including flirting and sexual attention.” At one high school,
cops were heard making remarks about a young woman's body. At
another school, a gay student was humiliated every day as male
cops would flip coins to see who had to search him.
Teachers Also Targeted
And what about those teachers who really are trying to make
a difference? What of those who care about the students and despite
low pay, cutbacks, deteriorating buildings, and increasingly
fascistic rules, are really trying to connect with students and
give them an education? What of the teachers who do not like
the way schools are being turned into prisons?
The ACLU report exposes how teachers who
dare to defend their students are attacked and brutalized,
sending a crystal clear
message to our young people: "No one is going to defend
you. Look what happens to anyone who does." Take one story
recounted in the report:
“On March 8, 2005, at least seven
NYPD officers arrived at the New School for Arts and Sciences
after teachers called
911 to ask for medical assistance for a student who had been
involved in a fight.
“Several teachers had successfully
stopped the fight and controlled the situation before the
police responded, and
Cara Wolfson-Kronen, a social studies teacher, informed the
911 operator that the fight had been defused. Despite this,
one of the officers demanded that the teachers identify the
students who had been involved in the fight and said that they
would be handcuffed.
“Quinn Kronen, an English teacher,
pointed out that those students were now peacefully sitting
in the classroom.
Officer Bowen responded by yelling: 'You fucking teachers need
to get your shit together. These kids are running crazy. You
need to get rid of them.' When Mr. Kronen objected to such
language, Sergeant Walter told Mr. Kronen that he had 'better
shut the fuck up' or she would arrest him. When Ms. Wolfson-Kronen
objected, Sergeant Walter said: 'that is it; cuff the bitch.'
Officers arrested Ms. Wolfson-Kronen, paraded her out of school
in handcuffs and forced her to stand outside in sub-freezing
temperature without a jacket. They also arrested Mr. Kronen.
“The teachers were detained at the
41st Precinct for approximately two hours before being released.
The charge against
each, disorderly conduct, was dismissed at their initial court
hearing, because their alleged wrongdoing did not constitute
unlawful activity.
“On March 22, 2005, Mr. Kronen and Ms. Wolfson-Kronen
received an anonymous letter signed by 'The Brotherhood.' The
letter threatened them with physical harm for 'messing up with
our fellow officers' continuing: 'If I were you I’d be
planning my getting out of New York fast.'”
In October 2006, Adhim Deveaux, a math teacher
at the Urban Assembly Academy of History and Citizenship, ran
outside after
hearing that one of his students was being assaulted by a cop.
After seeing the student being slammed onto a car, Deveaux went
up to the cop, hoping he could calm the situation down; he said, “He’s
my student, I’m his teacher. He’s just a kid.” In
response, the cop hit and shoved Deveaux and then another cop
grabbed Deveaux from behind, slammed him onto the sidewalk and
handcuffed him. Deveaux was taken to the precinct and charged
with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, and obstructing
governmental administration.
This teacher was trying to defuse a situation
before it got worse: in any society where the police or other
kinds of authorities
are really about serving the people, they would welcome this
and try to work with and rely on the teacher - and they would
listen when the teacher pleaded, "He's just a kid." But
these cops arrested the teacher, because enforcing repressive
prison-like conditions in the schools is what they are about
- not trying to solve problems among the students and teachers.
Criminalization of The youth
The NYCLU report details numerous times when students were attacked
and/or arrested for petty and ridiculous offenses like swearing,
being late for school or refusing to turn over their cell phones.
Their web site mentions a case of a 13-year-old girl who was
handcuffed and taken into custody in May for drawing on her desk
in school, charged with graffiti. These are kids who are doing
nothing wrong - and they are being pulled into the criminal system
and treated like criminals themselves.
This kind of criminalization of children is not limited to New
York City. Bob Herbert, a writer for the New York Times,
has written a number of columns about outrageous instances of
police brutality against boys and girls, including a 6-year-old
Black girl in Florida who was handcuffed and driven to jail because
she threw a tantrum in kindergarten, and a 7-year-old Black boy
in Baltimore, handcuffed for riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk.
Herbert points to the racist discrimination involved in such
cases. For instance, a 14-year-old Black girl in Texas was sentenced
to seven years in prison, in 2006, for shoving a hall monitor
(she was recently released), while a white girl in the same town,
convicted of arson, was sentenced only to probation.
Commenting on how students are “belittled, shouted at,
cursed at, intrusively searched and improperly touched by cops,” Bob
Herbert points out: “This poisonous police behavior is
an extension into the schools of the humiliating treatment cops
have long been doling out to youngsters - especially those who
are Black or Latino - on the city's streets.” (Poisonous
Police Behavior, June 2, 2007)
What kind of message is this sending to
our children? Schools should be places where students are encouraged
to test and try
out limits, where they are encouraged to make mistakes, where
the most important thing is making sure their minds are really
challenged and unleashed. But not in this society. When a young
woman is handcuffed for drawing on a desk, or a 6-year-old is
handcuffed for throwing a tantrum, this is a reflection of how
this society views its children. And the message is unmistakable:
This is not your world. Your lives don't matter. The only future
this system has for you is a shit job or prison. And when the
cops arrest girls and boys, these illegitimate and bogus arrests
are used to "prove" that these children really are
criminals, and to isolate these young people further from the
rest of society.
It is not simply that these cops are racist,
brute thugs who hate and fear the children they are charged
with controlling,
although that is unmistakable, after reading documents like this
report. Additionally, the outrageous and brutal use of the police
in the schools, and more generally against children, reflects
the role of the police in enforcing exploitive and oppressive
relations in society, including national oppression. These police
are not in the schools (or anywhere else) to “serve and
protect” the people. They are there to serve and protect
the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation that many of
our young people face: the highest unemployment and the worst
housing, education, and health care.
The report states, “during the 2004-2005
school year, 82 percent of children attending high schools
with permanent
metal detectors were Black and Latino, a minority enrollment
rate eleven percentage points higher than in schools citywide.
At DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, the largest high
school in the city with permanent metal detectors, there are
4,511 students and not one school librarian.”
What kind of system is it, when students are forced to go to
overcrowded, under-funded schools that look more like prisons
than places of learning and growth? What kind of system treats
the energy, the creativity, the rebelliousness of youth, as something
to be snuffed out, rather than cherished and unleashed? What
kind of system has enforcers who harass young people for not
going to school - and then harass and even arrest them, for petty
supposed offences, when they do?
Those who peddle the lie about America being
the "land
of opportunity, where any kid can become president,” who
prattle on about the "value of education" and “no
child left behind” - while saying and doing nothing about
the prison-like conditions in schools - have no right to speak
about “individual responsibility” and how our children
need to take make “better choices.”
To quote Pink's song "Dear Mr. President": " How
can you say/No child is left behind?/We're not dumb, and we're
not blind/They're all sitting in your cells/While you pave the
road to hell…"
This wasting and squandering of human potential,
this dehumanizing of the young, is unacceptable and intolerable.
We could have
an entirely different society - a society where there is no need
at all for schools with state-sanctioned armed thugs, jacking
up and locking down students. We could have a society where children
have an important role and future in building a whole new world,
a society where there is no longer one group that is held down
and locked out of the realm of ideas - and locked into prison-like
schools - while others are trained to use ideas either to “get
ahead” or to dominate others. It would be a socialist society,
where the state power is in the hands of the masses and where
the masses wield their power to wipe out exploitation and to
dig up the roots of all the social relations, institutions, and
ideas that go with that exploitation. It would be a communist
world, where this kind of domination and abuse is really NO MORE.
Linda Flores writes the for the Revolution
Newspaper where this article originally appeared. Click
here to contact Revolution Newspaper. |