We’ve seen countless videos of police officers brutalizing kids over the years - usually for nothing. Black kids as young as six years old are arrested and taken into custody, while cops who kill Black people walk free. Well, now it’s time to make some changes, and many cities have already started.
After years of activist pressure, many school districts in Minnesota, Oregon, and California have recently suspended or ended relationships with the police. More are working on it, too. This is not about acting on a whim - it’s about acknowledging what police have long gotten away with.
Law enforcement doesn’t make our kids safer, and placing cops in schools has numerous negative impacts on Black students, such as increasing the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools with police in them arrest and criminally charge far more Black students, and the effect begins as early as elementary school.
It’s happening at the university level too. Black college students are fighting back by pressuring administrators through protest, civil disobedience, and official channels. It means removing police so students don’t have to worry about police brutality on campus.
Schools are places where students go to receive education, not policing. If the huge budgets police departments receive were given to education in the first place, it would likely prevent many of the problems police have continually failed to solve.