By Susan Ferriss
Even as Los Angeles authorities
continue efforts to reform school-discipline standards, fresh data show that
police from the city’s biggest school district are continuing to ticket
thousands of young students, especially minorities, at disproportionate rates
that critics charge are putting them on a track for dropping out.
Citation rates for this year
are little changed from 2011 data. Disclosure of the 2011 data this past spring
led to federal civil-rights scrutiny and promises that policies at the Los
Angeles Unified School District would be reviewed, and likely changed.
In 2011, children 14 or younger
in the school district, the area’s biggest, were issued 43 percent of the
nearly 10,200 tickets school police handed out to students for fighting,
daytime-curfew violations and other minor infractions — indiscretions that
community groups and judges have maintained might better be handled by school
officials or referred directly to community-based counseling.
But during the first six months
of 2012, even as local juvenile judges’ skepticism about ticketing grew, the
share of younger students issued citations increased — to about 48 percent of
approximately 4,000 tickets issued, according to a review of the data by the
Center for Public Integrity.
Critics concede there has been
some progress. Data from September and October reveal district school police
officers issued fewer daytime curfew tickets than a year before — the result of
new rules adopted last February that stopped police “sweeps” ticketing kids as
they arrived to school, even a few minutes late. But records also show that during
these two months, school police still wrote up more than 1,000 citations to
students mostly for other infractions, including disturbing-the-peace
allegations and suspected marijuana smoking.
Since last school year,
community and parent representatives have met occasionally with school police
officials to discuss their concerns about police involvement in discipline
matters. Some school administrators also say they’d like to see clarification
as to when an incident merits police officers citing — or arresting — students.
L.A. Unified’s school police force is the nation’s biggest such agency, with
about 350 sworn officers and 125 school safety officers.
“I think you have to save
[police action] for really egregious things, like assault,” said Jorge Cortez,
the principal at Judith Baca Arts Academy, a Los Angeles Unified elementary
school.
Cortez told the Center that a
mom’s complaint last April led to school police issuing tickets to two
African-American first-graders who had gotten into a pushing match at his
school. The mother of one child called 911, Cortez said.
Sheriff’s deputies declined to
get involved, Cortez said. School police officers responded and issued
“disturbing the peace” tickets for “mutual fighting” to the six- and
seven-year-old boys. The citations were referred to the Los Angeles County
Probation Department.
Knowledge of right and wrong?
L.A. Unified School Police
Chief Steven Zipperman called citations of children as young as six and seven
“an anomaly.”
“When we take a look at citing
any student or arresting anybody for a crime,” the chief said, “it is all going
to be based on whether they have the knowledge of whether what they were doing
is right or wrong.”
Records show that in September
and October, tickets were issued to children as young as 10 years old. They
also show that that 13-year-olds were cited more often than 14-year-olds, or
17-year-olds. Zipperman explained that kids in the middle-school age group are
“probably one of our largest populations [involved] in a fighting-type activity.”
The chief said he and district
officials are continuing to discuss standards for when officers should refer
cases back to administrators, rather than issuing tickets —especially for
incidents like fighting. Zipperman said he still believes, however, that school
police officers need to have the discretion to make decisions on a
“case-by-case basis.”
Additional findings from
September-October school-police data show:
A 10-year-old African-American
child was ticketed in September for trespassing at the Menlo Avenue Elementary
School.
At the Bret Harte Preparatory
Middle School, seven African-American students between 11 and 13 were given
disturbing-the-peace citations by police for fighting, also in September.
Black students were ticketed at
twice the rate of their percentage of
school population.
District officials did not
respond to inquiries about these and other specific incidents, but issued a
statement that the school police force “has not, and will not, engage in any
form of biased or discriminatory enforcement activities.”
The statement says the district
“will continue to work with our internal and external stakeholders to identify
and evaluate non-penal alternatives to various minor violations.”
But concerns remain. Los
Angeles Delinquency Court Judge Donna Quigley Groman, in an interview, noted
that “if the approach was the same now when we went to school, a lot of us
wouldn’t be where we are now.”
Groman credits Zipperman with a
positive response to concerns about the role of school police, who are
obviously critical to student and staff safety. Both the judge and the chief
have joined a reform “partnership” that first met in September in the wake of
protests over police intervention in discipline matters and Center and Southern
California Public Radio stories analyzing previously undisclosed police
citation records.
The School-based Arrest Reform
Partnership is attempting to negotiate a protocol for when it’s appropriate for
police to arrest students in situations that don’t necessarily require it. The
talks include representatives of L.A. Unified and its school police force; the
city of Los Angeles’ police department; and the L.A. County’s sheriff’s
department, probation department, district attorney’s office, public defender’s
office and parents and civil rights groups.
Three meetings have taken place
and another is planned for January. The first goal is to reach consensus on
which offenses might be candidates for an alternative series of responses
before resorting to arrest. Such steps could include written warnings and
referrals to counseling, said Ruth Cusick, an attorney with Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm in Los
Angeles.
Cusick said the partnership
would also like to bring in a representative of United Teachers of Los Angeles,
a union representing district teachers. A union representative said the group
hasn’t heard from Public Counsel yet.
The meetings come on the heels
of other changes that occurred last year, when the L.A. unified district struck
an agreement with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education
to reduce suspensions of black students, especially.
The district is pressing all
its schools to start practicing “positive behavioral” support methods that
emphasize frequent praise to help engage students in school. Some schools have
started peer “courts” in school to sort out disputes, as well as referrals to
community-based counseling.
“Citations, we need them in
there, but we also need to educate our kids as well,” said Earl Perkins, L.A.
Unified’s assistant superintendent of school operations.
Positive change, but complaints
remain
The efforts to set new
standards for police action are a function of both a desire for clarity and new
fiscal realities.
This summer, budget cuts led to
the closure of low-level juvenile courts in Los Angeles County, which had
adjudicated cases involving ticketed students. Children were obliged,
ironically, to miss school to go to court with parents so they could answer to
truancy or other offenses that carried fines. If they hid a ticket from parents
and skipped going to court — as many did — the result was a misdemeanor record.
With those courts now closed,
all initial citations for daytime curfew violations are now referred back to
schools, or to one of a new series of L.A. community centers with after-school
counseling options.
All other types of tickets are
going to probation officials, who decide on a course of action. Hopefully,
probation officials say, most of the kids currently referred to them will
resolve their problems by successfully completing mandated counseling services,
sometimes with their families.
Children who are arrested or
whose offenses are judged more serious still face higher-level delinquency
court.
Groman said she’s been troubled
to see kids as young as 11 referred to her court when they’re charged with
criminal offenses at school.
Recalling her own youth, Groman
related a story of scaring a teacher by running around a classroom with a
scissors. “I didn’t know how to express myself any better,” said Groman. “But
would I be where I am today if the school had expelled me for being in
possession of a weapon? I highly doubt it.”
Similar concerns were aired
nationally Dec. 12 at the first congressional hearing on the “school to prison
pipeline,” and the impact of zero-tolerance discipline policies. It was held
before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil
Rights and Human Rights.
Schools have increasingly
become “a gateway” to the criminal-justice system, said Sen. Dick Durbin, an
Illinois Democrat who presided over the hearing.
Federal justice and education
officials testified that research clearly shows that placing students in the
criminal-justice system for relatively minor offenses only increases their risk
of dropping out and going on to more trouble.
Within the Los Angeles
district, some schools are struggling with dropout rates higher than 50
percent.
Age limit needed, some argue
Some community activists would
like to see an age limit on kids who could be issued police citations, or a
civilian review board to monitor school police.
Hostile contact with school
police can have a very profound impact on kids, said Manuel Criollo, an
organizer with the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, which led
the charge to rein in daytime-curfew sweeps around inner-city Los Angeles
schools.
Many students are struggling in
school or at home, Criollo said. Even those who are doing well, he said, get
discouraged if police treat them as potential troublemakers.
The Strategy Center helped file
complaints with Zipperman on behalf of two boys who were stopped by officers
near their school, minutes late, and were searched, handcuffed and allegedly
intimidated inside a squad car before officers took them into school and wrote
them curfew tickets. The complaints, reported by the Center earlier this year,
are still under review, Strategy Center lawyer Zoe Rawson and police said.
The national picture
U.S. schools have only recently
been required to disclose ticket and arrest numbers to the U.S. Department of
Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which is trying to measure the extent of
student referrals to police and courts.
L.A. Unified, along with other
districts, failed to submit its data last year. District officials explained
that calculating referrals is daunting because multiple police agencies operate
in the L.A. district.
But records reviewed by the
Center suggest that L.A. Unified’s school force, which by far has the most
contact with students, tickets them at higher rates than police assigned to New
York City’s schools. With about 1 million students, New York’s system is the
only U.S. school district bigger than L.A. Unified, which has fewer than
700,000 students.
The American Civil Liberties
Union — which is suing New York police for alleged excessive force in schools —
regularly obtains and reviews quarterly figures for that district’s
school-based citations and arrests.
During the 2011-2012 academic
year, the ACLU recently said, New York police issued 1,666 citations to
students. By comparison, L.A. Unified school police issued more than 1,000
tickets in September and October of this year alone.
New York police made 882
arrests in schools during the 2011-2012 academic year. L.A. school police made
4,333 arrests over the course of three calendar years, from 2009 through 2011,
according to data that the Center for Public Integrity reviewed.
More than 1,960, or 45 percent,
of the Los Angeles arrests were of students 14 or younger.
The single biggest type of
offense for which L.A. students were arrested was battery, including battery on
school staff and police officers, said Cusick of Public Counsel. She said it is
not uncommon for students to become emotional and struggle if they are grabbed
during an encounter with police. First-time battery incidents, with no serious
injury involved, Cusick said, are among the offenses that authorities could
consider putting on a list for referral to prompt professional counseling
rather than to court.
For Groman, the case of an
11-year-old accused of battery on a teacher sums up flaws in the current
court-referral system.
“I don’t condone any kind of
physical violence against a teacher,” she said. “However, to send an
11-year-old boy to juvenile court, where he’s sitting in the waiting room with
many more sophisticated youth, gang-related youth, it’s just not the place for
an 11-year-old.”
Like many kids, Groman added,
the 11-year-old’s day in court did not take place until 60 days after the
incident — too late for a child to effectively make a connection to what he or
she did two months ago.
“This young boy needed some
therapy,” Groman said. “The family needed some counseling. Yet none of that was
done because the case, instead of being handled at the school level, was
referred to the juvenile-justice system, which does not move very fast at all.”
Alternative ideas
In September, a team of justice
authorities from Clayton County, Ga., traveled to Los Angeles to talk to Groman
and others about a protocol they follow for referring students to court. Clayton
County has emerged as a model for reformers.
Until firm standards were set,
Clayton County Chief Juvenile Court Judge Steven Teske said, more than 90
percent of referrals to his court came from schools.
Lt. Francisco Romero, former
Clayton County school resource officer, accompanied Teske to L.A. Romero told
the Center that he supported instituting a protocol after realizing that he had
arrested more students than any other
officer in his county during one period of time.
“I never had any positive engagement
with the kids. All they saw me as was an arresting machine,” Romero said. Some
school staff resisted a formal protocol at first. But ultimately, Romero said,
schools accepted it and Romero found he could focus on serious crimes. Kids
grew to trust him. Teske testified at the recent congressional hearing that the
protocol helped drive up graduation rates and reduce felonies.
Zipperman said that in Los
Angeles, the citations his officers write don’t always lead to “punitive”
action against a student. For many, he said, it’s a path to getting the
counseling they need.
Hellen Carter, juvenile field
services chief of the Los Angeles County Probation Department, praised
Zipperman as a “tremendous problem solver.” But she said it still takes weeks
to get kids processed and into counseling, which isn’t ideal. Schools could
accomplish a lot more, she said, with more “teen courts” and mediation on
campus. And school staff could benefit, she said, from training to distinguish
between what is truly a serious incident and what is not.
“We know that kids are going to
do some dumb things,” Carter said. “And we want to give them the opportunity to
make amends for what they’ve done, learn from what they’ve done, but also not
put them in a position where it can literally destroy their future.”
Center for Public Integrity
data editor David Donald contributed to this report.
