Tucson Police Officer Bur Bateman, a school resource officer, greets students on the first day of school at Santa Rita High School in 2018.

 Mike Christy / Arizona Daily Star 2018

As Tucson’s largest school district prepares to pour resources into safely reopening schools amid a global health pandemic, the cost and impact of having armed, uniformed police officers on campuses has come into question.

Tucson Unified School District spent a total of $1.2 million, nearly $500,000 of which covered the cost of school resource officers (SROs) and the remaining $700,000 paying for off-duty officers who man school events like high school football games, in 2018 and 2019.

But at a time when conversations about police brutality and the need for police reform are at the forefront of conversations nationally, the TUSD governing board is considering whether daily exposure to law enforcement officers is in the best interest of students of color and whether those financial resources could be spent to support students in different ways.

Building trust at a cost?

TUSD has 12 school resource officers stationed at middle and high schools across the city.

They are tasked with not only responding to threats or acts of violence, but with building relationships with students and providing educational experiences including teaching courses on students’ rights and how to safely interact with police.

Programming linked to collaboration with law enforcement includes an alternative-to-arrest effort that has diverted more than 100 TUSD students away from the justice system and an initiative in which law enforcement alerts TUSD when students are exposed to criminal acts at home in an effort to provide additional monitoring and support as needed.

For the school year that just came to a close, TUSD had 44 threats of violence, some of which resulted in the need for full-blown threat assessments and others that were able to be discounted early on.

With 28 active shooter incidents reported in 2019, according to FBI statistics, such threats of violence cannot be taken lightly and reducing resources available to respond could be harmful, said Jeff Coleman, director of school safety for TUSD.

Coleman added that given recent events, providing positive examples of law enforcement authorities could build trust.

Though TUSD Governing Board President Kristel Foster acknowledges the potential for a school shooting β€” admitting that her previous support of SROs was rooted in fear, she questioned whether building trust of police through school resource officer programs is detrimental to minority children.

β€œI’m not against the work that you presented here ... I am against having a uniformed officer on the school site every single day and I want to hear what that means for our most vulnerable students,” Foster said.

β€œI want to hear specifically from our black young men – what does it mean to come to school every day?”

De-escalation

Over the course of nearly seven years, Coleman says only three use-of-force incidents have occurred with school resource officers in TUSD, which serves more than 40,000 students.

The last incident was five years ago and Coleman attributes that to SROs being specially trained and investing themselves in their campus communities β€” a sentiment board members heard from principals who reached out to share stories of officers taking part in graduation parades last month and coaching sports teams.

Coleman noted that because school resource officers know the students, when conflict arises, the likelihood of an officer overreacting is greatly reduced.

β€œIf you’re just put into the queue, you’re going to get a patrol officer, and often times, a patrol officer coming to the school is under a lot of pressure to get the job done and go on to the next event,” Coleman said. β€œThey’ll be very focused on problem solving and not spending a lot of time to get to the root of the problem. It’s easier to, for instance, just make an arrest, do a paper referral, and get on to the next thing.”

TUSD Governing Board Member Adelita Grijalva acknowledged that benefit but also expressed concern that SROs are sometimes thrust into the position of being an intermediary to de-escalate situations that are intensified by the presence of beat cops.

Priorities and prevention

For TUSD Governing Board Clerk Leila Counts, the discussion about SROs is not about individual officers.

β€œIt’s about budgetary priorities and prevention,” she said.

Given the massive unrest, combined with the fact that over 1 million Arizonans are collecting unemployment benefits due to the impacts of COVID-19, Counts feels a budgetary priority should be investing in counselors and social workers.

β€œThis upcoming year, it’s going to be more important that ever when we’re talking about the economic hardships and serious issues that our students and their families are going to be facing,” she said. β€œI don’t want to leave a void in the resources but I would like to shift our budget to our priorities and what we are charged to do, which is building that school community starting with educators and counselors β€” people who are trained in meeting the needs of our kids from a prevention standpoint.”

Both Foster and Grijalva believe that authority figures within those school communities should be accessible and viewed as a resource, not armed and not in uniform.

TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said it’s also the vision of the school district to reduce the presence of law enforcement on campuses, possibly by investing in school monitors, who already have relationships with students, with enhanced training.

Though no decisions have been made on SROs, the discussion will continue on Tuesday, June 23, as the board will consider directing the district to conduct surveys and organize an advisory committee to determine the attitudes, opinions and concerns in the community about the program. Other considerations, including data and national trends, would be taken into account when determining whether to continue, end or modify the SRO program for the upcoming school year.

The Tucson Police Department is expected to present its vision of community policing and the role of SROs to the board.

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