OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Last week, the ACLU of Nebraska and other agencies sent a request to school officials throughout Nebraska, asking that police no longer be part the everyday school experience.
This request comes on the heels of a study conducted by the ACLU in 2018 on the effect of police in schools.
“What we found was that these school programs not only directly funnel students into theschool to prison pipeline, but they also particularly target students of color and students with disabilities and those trends continue to this day," said Rose Godinez, Legal and Policy Counsel of the ACLU Nebraska.
According to that study, data collected from Omaha Public Schools showed that while students of color made up 71% of the student population they made up 80% of law enforcement referrals. While students with disabilities made up 18.2% of the student population, they made up 44% of referrals.
Another issue the ACLU takes with school resource officers (SROs) is that they are often involved in non-criminal discipline, something teachers agree with.
“The educators should still maintain control of any action," said Robert Miller, president of the Omaha Education Association. "A small conversation off to the side explaining what he did was inappropriate and how to address it. The reaching out to SROs should be the last option.”
According to the ACLU's study, Omaha and many other school districts did not have a clear policy on discipline in 2018. Omaha also did not have policies on how students or parents could file complaints against an SRO, when parents should be notified of a student's referral to law enforcement or search and seizure policies.
KMTV reached out to both the School Resource Officer Unit of the Omaha Police Department and the Omaha School District to discuss current policies but did not receive an answer from either. A formal request has been filed for those documents.
Miller said he believes more training should be done which is why the association supported LB390 which addressed many of these issues and was approved last April. The teachers do not believe, however, that officers should be removed all together.
“We think the SROs should be utilized to protect us from the people from the outside," Miller said. "So school shootings and those individuals, for keeping the students and staff safe in the building.”
The ACLU says they realize school shootings are an issue and believe police should respond, but having a daily police presence is harmful. That is why they are in support of LB 589 which would remove SROs if passed.
“The impact that it's having on students of color and students with disabilities is a clear trend, whereas studies that have studied whether school police in any way have increase school safety, they don’t see a correlation there," Godinez said.
While they may disagree on whether officers should be in schools, both the ACLU and the Omaha Education Association agree that more funding is needed for counselors.
