https://www.utla.net/news/utla-statement-lausd-vote-defund-school-police-budget-35
For immediate release
July 1, 2020
Media Contact: Anna Bakalis 213-305-9654
UTLA Statement on LAUSD vote to defund school police budget by 35%
The LAUSD School Board yesterday approved an immediate 35% cut to the LAUSD school police, after weeks of protests organized by Students Deserve and Black Lives Matter-LA that amplified the movement to eliminate school police. The cut equals a reduction of $25 million to the school police budget — the biggest reduction to school police in the country since George Floyd’s murder triggered a worldwide uprising against police violence and in support of Black Lives Matter.
The news came the eve of July 1, when Cecily Myart-Cruz officially became UTLA president – the first woman of color president in the union’s 50-year history.
“The school board’s action is a huge first step in the campaign for police-free schools and ground-breaking in terms of our movement for supporting Black lives in our schools,” said UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz. “It was the power and passion in the streets across LA and this country, uplifting the voices of Black students, educators and families that made this happen. We can’t let up. We must keep fighting for our babies and our students.”
Prior to the 4-3 vote, the LA School Police Department budget was $70 million, which paid for the largest school police force in the country. The money saved will fund staff to serve the needs of Black students and a task force to re-envision school safety. The board motion also calls for officers to give up their uniforms and patrol off campus until a district task force meets and issues a report, according to media reports.
The late-night school board vote on Tuesday followed powerful testimony by LAUSD students who detailed the academic and emotional fallout from the criminalization of students by the daily presence of law enforcement and the use of weapons like pepper spray on children. Their stories were bolstered by years of research that shows that the presence of school police lowers graduation rates, does not make schools safer, and negatively impacts student learning.
L.A. Unified now joins several other school systems, including in Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond, Denver, Portland, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Charlottesville, in moving to defund school police and remove armed officers from campus.
Last week, the policy-making body of UTLA, the House of Representatives, overwhelmingly endorsed a call to eliminate the LAUSD school police and shift funding to student needs — needs like counselors, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, and pupil services and attendance counselors.
In advance of the school board vote, UTLA joined a coalition of organizations, including Black Lives Matter LA, ACLU of Southern California, California Association of School Counselors, CHIRLA, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles, and California National Organization of Women in calling for a disinvestment from school police and an investment in students (letter attached).
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Encouraging step, but LAUSD does not have the “largest school police force in the country” as claimed above. NYC DOE has more than 5,000 School Safety Officers who work for the NYPD, at a cost of nearly $500M — more than seven times the cost of the police at LAUSD.
According to the LAUSD website, they have only “10 sworn police officers, 101 non-sworn school safety officers (SSO), and 34 civilian support staff” , far less than the 5,000 in NYC schools. https://achieve.lausd.net/Page/15609
Maybe they meant that Los Angeles Unified has the largest police force independently run by a school district? LASP is not affiliated with LAPD.
As for the $25 million cut, LAPD can take care of serious crimes on campus. I’m weary of attacking police unions, but I don’t think LASP has a real union. Since Investment Banker Turned Superintendent Beutner wanted to keep all of LASP and denied that the constant presence of armed officers at school could be harmful to students, it’s an easy choice to agree with UTLA. Beutner is not anti-racist; he’s anti-public education, and is almost always wrong. And actually, I have witnessed unnecessary force by LASP officers, dating back decades. They don’t make me feel safe; they make me nervous. Pay for smaller classes and more counselors instead.
LAUSD police are a non-issue, their presence is hardly felt.
We are going to have severe budgetary problems over the next several years, so cuts will be inevitable. The question is how much cutting will be done.
UTLA’s (my union’s) demand to completely defund the LAUSD police is asinine.
It’s true that there are bigger budget fish to fry, but I must very respectfully disagree that this is wasteful. It is important. UTLA visibly does everything it can to protect students and teachers from harmful administrative mandates, so when UTLA takes action to fight for better funding and resources, the families of Los Angeles support UTLA. We teachers do everything we can to protect every single student. No issue is too small.
I can’t argue with that, and agree that every department in the District should feel the pinch.
Calls to completely defund police departments (in general), however, are ridiculous. I see no reason to completely dismantle the District’s police force…can you imagine what kind of abuse LAPD and LA Co sheriff’s deputies would heap upon students if that were done? Those agencies would have to assign equivalent numbers of officers to the school district; officers not specifically trained to deal with children. We’d get the same issues that we hear and see so often from other districts around the country (which we have pretty much avoided over the last several decades.)
Perhaps you would save a bit on the administrative side, but lawsuit payouts would skyrocket, I’m sure.
Steve, I agree that the slogan “Defund the police” is ridiculous. It’s a gift to Trump. When there are no more bad people in the world, we can get rid of police.
Left-Coast,
Do you agree with the uinon’s position to completely do away with the District’s police department?
I view leadership’s statement as political posturing, grandstanding and virtue signaling.
I agree completely with UTLA. At UTLA meetings, the sense of injustice being perpetrated against our students is palpable. I see no reason to have any police at all stationed on campus, any more than I see a reason to have police stationed on the doorstep of my home. Don’t forget that schools are filled with mandated reporters who are required by law to call the Sheriffs, Child Services, or LAPD — not school police — when felonies are committed against minors. When minor crimes are committed, theft, vandalism, fighting, drugs, etc., we should be able to handle the situations with counselors and sometimes school consequences like suspensions and expulsions. We as a district need to have more empathy and maturity. No more school police.
Please allow me to edit in the words “at what is” after the word ‘perpetrated’ up there.
In my 26 years as an LAUSD teacher I have, among many other things:
-Witnessed the 1996 shooting death of a student standing outside the front entrance of a comprehensive high school.
-Had to deal with one of my 10th grade homeroom students being stabbed 17 times while in the stairwell (1998). He, himself, was a steroid-using, 18th Street sociopath that frequently talked about killing small children.
-Had to deal with dozens of fights between students, their ages ranging from 13 to 20 years old. Nearly every fight had to be immediately investigated for the possibility of being gang related…a constant threat for schools located where local gangs vied for control against gangs such as MS13 and 18th Street.
-Been in an all-day lock down situation where the District police officer was shot at point blank range while in the school parking lot [at 7:25 in the morning, 5 minutes before school began on a Concept-6 schedule.]
-Had a student [violent, released on parole 1 week prior] place a sharpened pencil within 1 inch of my unprotected eye as I leaned over to provide him some help (2008). A week later the kid pulled a knife on a fellow student after exiting a Metro bus.
-Observed violent, psychotic and sociopathic relatives, rivals and lovers of adult and sub-adult students enter campuses and attempt to harm various people.
These incidents were all at comparatively mellow schools and I have never observed or even heard rumors of a school police officer harming a student at one of the high schools where I have worked. I’m sure it has happened and I am sure that it happens occasionally, but my opinion is that every single comprehensive high school needs to have a police officer on hand; middle schools should have them available within 5 minutes of being called.
Many other issues are more pressing than removing police officers from the LAUSD.
Having taught on at Compton Ave and 104th St, near Grape, I can’t say I’ve ever been particularly concerned about 18th St. Heard of them, though. And MS13 is so ubiquitous, I am not sure it’s even a gang; it’s more of a clothing style. They’re in Santa Monica too, among the mansions and beach flats, for crying out loud. I could tell some harrowing stories too, times when LAPD had to be involved, like the time when a young woman in my 1st period stopped going to class because her mother shot her in the leg at the front gate before school one morning.
I could also tell about multiple times when LAPD sent some 50 officers to flood the street and all the projects, a military occupying force that completely shut down the whole neighborhood, just to serve an arrest warrant on one man. I could tell you about a time when an LASP officer, one who has frequently been featured as a spokesperson in L.A. Times articles over the years, violently threw and pinned against the wall of the principal’s office an unarmed student who was just standing still in defiance. Our fear of drugs and gangs is overblown, and our force reaction to them feeds the violence. If we see students as criminals and schools as war zones or concrete jungles, they are made to feel like enemy combatants. It’s not justice. It’s not protecting and serving. It needs to change. We all need to change.
If the faculties of the Markham/Gompers/Locke Complex wish to do away with their handful of police officers over an extensive trial period, please do so.
Should have started that trial run years ago, so we could all see how effective/ineffective it would be.
Yes, I like democracy.
Steve M – no doubt an unpopular view but I concur which I have shared before.
If the police in the schools are racist, aggressive, intimidating… they shouldn’t be there.
They were (or should have been) trained big time in de-escalation, cultural responsiveness and awareness, approaching some children with disabilities who react different than the norm, working with children who do not speak English and others.
They were or (should have been) interviewed and selected not only by the police but the principal and others.
If there inappropriate police in schools, that’s the employer’s bad judgment,
At minimum, the administration should have the authority to remove such an officer.
Police should not be doing teacher and administrator jobs and vice versa.
Police shouldn’t be taking care of non-dangerous classroom misbehavior, kids who yell at teachers, kids who bully, kids who do what a kids have done in schools for years. Hence “Go to the principal’s office!”
And, school folks (except trained administrators) after first referral follow up shouldn’t be investigating drugs and weapons on the property, handling bomb threats, getting in the middle a fights….
School officers, the good ones, have good relationships with kids. They know them and welcome them – even through the metal detectors (sadly). So maybe they are not all Andy Taylor, but they are go to people for many kids, they hear the tips, and prevent as much as they react to.
And, like it or not – they make a lot of kids feel a little more safe – and their presence does prevent stuff.
I’m not sure which school district you’re referring to; I was speaking about LAUSD.
What you allude to is seen throughout the country, but LAUSD’s police force has been fairly mellow, as far as I know; almost quiescent.
There are always going to be issues regarding improprieties and abuse allegations, but LAUSD police have much more pressing issues to deal with than removing 4th graders from classrooms. Administrators and campus aides are given that responsibility, with safegaurds in place to protect kids.