Yesterday, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) Board of Directors voted on a motion demanding that the school board de-fund the Los Angeles Schools Police Department (LASPD), the largest school police department in the country. While the full details of the motion and its reach are not public information as of this writing, UTLA has a long history of supporting major reforms in school policing and the Black Lives Matter movement in Los Angeles.
The vote can be understood as support for the Black Lives Matter protests. Concern for the experience of our BIPOC students everywhere – in our schools and on our streets – has taken over the discourse across the country following the murder of George Floyd and the eruption of police brutality in response to protests.
The UTLA is hardly alone in calling for radical changes, or even a complete abolition, of the LASPD. Groups such as the Community Corporation of South Los Angeles, the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, Students Deserve, and the Labor Community Strategy Center (known for projects such as Taking Action Social Justice Clubs in L.A. High Schools and the Bus Riders Union) have been working for change in how middle and high schools mediate behavioral issues with students for years. And that change would include either de-funding or completely abolishing the school police.
“The very existence of an armed, intimidating police force in the public schools is on its face a blatant violation of the civil rights of Black, Latinx students,” writes the Labor Community Strategy Center in a statement earlier today calling on LAUSD to cancel its $67 million contract with LASPD.
“The LAUSD has caused great harm to Black and Latinx women students who complain of officers flirting with them and creating such an intimidating atmosphere that it inhibits their confidence and concentration.”
And the statistics backup these claims.
According to Policing Our Students, a 2018 report by UCLA’s Million Dollar Hoods project in the UCLA Bunche Center, a disproportionate amount of diversions, arrests and citations were of black students by the Los Angeles School Police Department between 2014-2017. One in eleven LAUSD students are black, but one in four police disciplinary actions were on black students.
By comparison, white and “other” students comprise 18% of LAUSD students, but only 5% of police disciplinary cases.
These police actions are divided into three categories. “Arrest” and “citation” which can be on a student’s criminal record for the rest of his/her life. “Diversions” to a school counseling or disciplinary program have far less serious impacts and do not appear on a criminal record. As you can see in the graphic below, nearly half of all disciplinary actions chronicled in the report involved an arrest and nearly 3/4 were arrest or citation.
A statement released with that report, called for major changes to how schools are policed. The only action item approved by LAUSD was expanding the list of offenses that would send students to a diversion program and keep them out of the criminal justice system. Sadly, a similar promise to increase the percent of infractions sent to diversion instead of the justice system had been made by the district just four years earlier with little result.
News of UTLA’s recent action on LASPD was not announced by them directly, but by one of its board members on social media. The board member posted on Facebook with a graphic contrasting the presence of police in schools that must operate without counselors, nurses, school psychologists and social workers: “This is why I voted yes on the #UTLA BOD to eliminate the LASPD.”
The post kicked off a firestorm of controversy on the popular “Parents Supporting Teachers”, a closed Facebook Group of over 24,000 parents and teachers with responders voicing support, opposition and asking questions. Many of the questions were about how students would be kept safe in an emergency should a defunding program occur, especially in areas where black and brown students could find themselves faced by LAPD or County Sheriffs who haven’t been known for their restraint when dealing with suspects.
UTLA has yet to make an official statement, they haven’t even officially notified or polled their members. However they did email a statement to members in advance of the vote reaffirming their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Too often our schools are spaces where Black students and families have not felt safe and supported because of “random” search policies, the use of pepper spray, and the presence of police. We must do better for our traumatized students. We must take a look at how our schools are being policed. We must decriminalize our schools.
UTLA letter to members, June 5 2020. Full letter, here.
Anyone familiar with UTLA politics would not be surprised by its support for the Black Lives Matter Movement.
In recent weeks, it has used its social media to both send support to protestors and amplify stories of police abuse and COVID-19’s disproportionate impacts on black and brown communities. As far back as 2016, the year Black Lives Matter was founded, the union has amplified announcements of events programmed by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, worked to help BLM program events on LAUSD property and utilized many of their publications in their resources page for teachers looking for help teaching racial justice and history.