Oakland votes to eliminate school police force

(26 Jun 2020) The Oakland Unified School District Board has voted unanimously to eliminate the district's police department and to redirect millions in police funding to services for students.
Oakland city police would handle emergency calls instead of the school force of 10 sworn officers and 50 unarmed campus security guards. However, because of union contracts, the measure approved Wednesday won't take effect immediately.
"This has been a long time coming and it's an important step towards decriminalizing our schools and reinvesting in more transformative models," said Jackie Byers, executive director of the Black Organizing Project, which has been advocating fo the change for many years.
Oakland is one of 19 school districts in California with its own police department.
"A lot of students and young people have been saying, we don't want police in our schools. It doesn't make us feel safe," Byers said. "So folks have been calling for reinvestments in the sort of things that make students feel safe, like counselors, social workers, mental health support, and also for just investments in teachers and investments in programs."
California's top schools official said Wednesday his office is working to re-imagine the role of police officers at the state's 10,000 public schools but said some schools would still need officers on campus to protect students' safety.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said the officers would be needed to protect students from dangers, including school shootings or bomb threats but officers would no longer be called upon to discipline misbehaving students.
Thurmond, who is California's only Black statewide elected official, said schools that still need a police presence would get officers who choose to be there and who have been trained on implicit bias. He said officers won't be assigned to campuses.
He said his office has convened a task force that includes legislators, researchers, law enforcement officials and advocacy groups that will look at how to address security issues at public schools.
On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Education voted to cut ties with city police amid protests against police brutality across the country.
Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to end an agreement with the San Francisco Police Department involving 12 armed police officers assigned to respond to calls at schools.
Schools throughout the nation are grappling with how to address demands to get police officers out of schools amid protests against police brutality following the death last month of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The Oakland resolution to eliminate school police was named for Floyd.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the nation, rejected a proposal to cut the campus police budget  by 90% by 2024.
The board of United Teachers Los Angeles, the powerful teachers union, recently voted to call for defunding the school police department and using $63 million of its $70 million budget for counseling and other student services.

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