By Kara Harris, Bloomberg CityLab, August 24, 2020
When students in Minneapolis, Denver and Oakland eventually return to their classrooms, one group will be notably missing from school grounds: the police.
After the killing of George Floyd and the resulting “defund the police” movement to divert resources to other types of community services, the Minneapolis School District was the first of several in the U.S. to end its relationship with the local police department. On June 2, the school board voted unanimously to terminate the decades-long contract, which costs the district $1.1 million per year to employ 14 school resource officers, or SROs, to monitor high schools and middle schools.
The decision is part of a long national fight to de-police schools, with advocates arguing that the presence of law enforcement sends a disproportionate number of non-white students into the justice system at an early age. School police officers are assigned to monitor criminal activity like active shooters, assault, theft and trespassing; in some jurisdictions, they carry weapons and have the authority to arrest students.
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