Michigan students to Gov. Whitmer: Stop putting police officers in schools

A group of students wants to stop Gov. Gretchen Whitmer from directing $25 million to place police officers on campuses at 195 public school districts.

The students, a part of an advocacy group called Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan in partnership with Detroit nonprofit 482Forward, have launched a petition opposing the governor's $25 million fund for school resource officers. While the program aims to boost school safety in an unsettling time for gun violence in schools, the students said stationing police officers, called school resource officers, in K-12 schools makes students feel like criminals.

The group is instead requesting more mental health support in schools, including more counselors, rather than police officers.

Jada Knight, 17, said school resource officers are often portrayed as adults who build strong bonds with teenagers. But that's not the case for everyone, the high school senior in Oakland County said.

"Unfortunately, that's just not a universal experience and not representative of what the majority of students have with them," she said. "And especially for students of color and students with disabilities."

Whitmer, in a news release in January, said the $25 million will help secure schools in the state, placing nearly 200 officers at public schools. The governor's office did not respond to a request for comment about student opposition to police officers on campus. The Police Officers Association of Michigan released a statement in support of the grant program, thanking Whitmer for the funding, which is distributed over three years.

Over the past three years in particular, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and resulting protests over police misconduct, students have increasingly opposed the presence of officers in schools. In 2015, a school resource officer handcuffed a 7-year-old student with a disability in Flint, which led to a lawsuit and an eventual settlement between the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and the Flint Police Department.

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Research around whether resource officers make schools safer has not pointed to a definitive conclusion. But a 2017 study published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management found that children are more likely to be arrested when an officer is on campus, even for minor violations.

Robert McCann, executive director of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan, said policymakers should look beyond just school security, focusing on mental health supports and community resources to bolster students who are often facing trauma, like the MSU shooting or the string of threats that shut down schools across the state in January.

"This is a much, much broader lens we all have to take responsibility for, rather than just narrowing it down to quote unquote school security," he said.

Janiala Young, 14, a freshman at Renaissance High School in Detroit, remembers female students feeling humiliated and embarrassed in middle school when a resource officer claimed leggings were inappropriate to wear to school on a free dress day. Detroit Public School Community District has its own police department within the district.

Meanwhile, Young said, students like her are struggling every day with the impact of gun violence, and need mental health resources.

"Guns are getting so out of control that I'm losing people really close to me or even distance for me at such a fast and high rate," she said. "It kind of doesn't make any sense and I don't really understand it."

Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Group of students oppose Whitmer's $25 million plan for cops in schools