The Case to Remove SROs
Miles Bell '22 Staff Writer
Each year, the presence of an armed individual in a school environment is normalized, with Student Resource Officers having played this role for a very long time. But what is the purpose of a Student Resource Officer in schools? A student resource officer, in theory, is in place to keep peace and order in a school building. An SRO should make students and educators feel safe and secure in a learning environment. However, according to a National Assessment of School Resource Officer Programs in 2005, over 76% of students did not have a positive opinion of their SRO. The first, and arguably most important, finding is that SROs do not improve school safety or reduce violence in schools. According to an article by Aaron Kupchik in USA Today analyzing the relationship between students and SROs, “While some well-designed studies suggest that the presence of SROs prevents student crime, a greater number of studies, each of which uses credible methods to compare schools with and without SROs, suggest that there is either no impact on student crime rates, or that the addition of SROs is associated with increased student misconduct (once taking into account preexisting school conditions). These inconsistent results might be due, in part, to variations in what SROs do.” Furthermore, having SROs in schools makes students more anxious and minor misbehavior is criminalized, according to the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. This already doesn’t paint a great picture for SROs. Unfortunately, local testimonies have not been positive either. Among staff at Howard High, the issue is further complicated by teachers’ interest in preserving a good relationship with these SROs who are coworkers, and also armed officers who regularly encounter children these teachers have a duty to protect. A staff member at Howard (source verified by the Lion’s Tale) who wishes to remain anonymous reflected, “What does the mandated presence of an SRO do but heighten tensions and make kids feel like they are in jail?” The source continued that many SROs they have worked with “seemed to be ... a coach with a gun.” This staff member also mentioned the school-to-prison pipeline, a researched study on the correlation between suspensions and poor grades with arrests. If students in need of social and emotional health interventions receive them at the hands of a police officer, that connection between school misbehavior and arrests is amplified. Student reports clarify the issue and show a need for change. “I went to AHS and my SRO was useless. When my friends had been sexually assaulted, he was in defense of the abusers and did nothing to advocate for her safety. His presence was nothing but useless and at times more damaging,” says Maya Carey, a former student of Atholton High School. Nate Manusco, a current Junior at Wilde Lake High, says, “In my freshman year I watched as an SRO bodied a student in a fight and then proceeded to pin her to the ground for multiple minutes.” These are not the actions of a force that improves the safety of students in schools. It’s time for them to go. I support the motion introduced recently by the SMOB, Zach Koung, that takes that action. In his motion, Koung clarified that the regulations that placed SROs in schools could be interpreted to mean a variety of interventions from local law enforcement and in-county supports. So why does Howard County choose to interpret the guideline to the most extreme interpretation, with officers in all high schools and selected middle schools daily? SROs do not have a positive impact on students in schools and their removal has been long overdue. Removing SROs would make students much more comfortable in the school environment, and the community taxes that fund them could go to more effective student safety initiatives like school social workers, more school counselors, and community mental health services.