The City Goes “Full Enron” in Defunding the Police
The City made news in the beginning of July when it announced that it would be reallocating $1 billion from the NYPD to the Department of Education. The move came in the wake of ongoing racial justice protests, which we support.
Unfortunately, it only took a couple of days before people realized that most of the $1 billion being cut from the NYPD was going to “school safety” — in other words, to continue funding the NYPD through its in-school partnership with the Department of Education.
Having gun-toting police officers in our schools is of questionable value at best. They are ill-equipped to stop school shootings — that much was evident as early as Columbine and as recently as Parkland. In the time period between those tragedies, however, “school safety officers” across the nation have detained, arrested, harassed, and abused tens of thousands of students, predominantly students of color and students with disabilities.
School safety officers are trained to have a completely different mindset than educators and related professionals. Too often they operate as if they were patrolling a beat. A sizable plurality of them must think of themselves as getting ready for battle every morning. Such a worldview is the only thing that can explain the kinds of footage that we see going viral now. Technology has enabled teenagers to actually depict the kind of treatment that they're occasionally subjected to by so-called school safety officers.
It's amazing to me that an accounting trick is being presented as defunding. Luckily, I’m not the only one who sees it for what it is. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed her disappointment in a statement after the arrangement was announced.
“Defunding the police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education budget so that the exact same police remain in schools. That is not a victory.”
It comes as no surprise to me that the NYPD would have an extra billion dollars. It doesn’t surprise me that the City used an accounting trick to make it seem responsive to the movement for racial equality. What does surprise me is how there are no plans to make system-wide reforms in the way cops interact with students. Being surrounded by children has a tendency to bring someone down to their level. Teachers are aware of that and prepared for it, but police officers are trained to have a completely different way of doing things — a way that isn’t always compatible with educational goals.
Marc Gottlieb
Partner
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Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
Marc@GottliebFirm.com
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