One of the most controversial aspects of police-community relations is the presence of police officers in schools, known as School Resource Officers, or SROs. Since the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, more than 20 school districts have eliminated SROs, according to the publication Education Week.

Opponents of SROs call them part of the school-to-prison pipeline, affecting mostly black and brown students.

But school boards in other districts, including Chicago and Los Angeles, after much debate, have decided not to remove their officers from schools.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Dave Cruz-Bustamante, a sophomore at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Connecticut. He was one of the speakers at a statewide kick-off event to pressure the state legislature to pass a measure to fund support personnel in schools, not police. Here he explains why he believes deploying police officers to schools is not the answer to concerns about school safety.

DAVE CRUZ-BUSTAMENTE: On Saturday, they launched their Care Not Cops campaign in front of the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, Connecticut. The exact demands of the campaign are to push forward a bill that would replace SROs, which are School Resource Officers, with School Resource Counselors. They also want to redefine SROs to include security officers and other non-police actors that still contribute to the criminalization of black and brown youth. They want accountability and transparency legislation for police-led interactions in schools, and also focusing on decriminalizing truancy and chronic absenteeism.

MELINDA TUHUS: The organizing in Connecticut is part of a national movement, isn’t it, Dave?

DAVE CRUZ-BUSTAMENTE: Yeah, I think especially since the uprising last year in the summer, it’s been a continuous movement. So, you see a lot of different places like Denver pushing to get rid of SROs, removing them from schools and instead of investing in police in schools, investing instead in more social workers, counselors, psychiatrists and nurses. And I believe Denver is starting the process of divesting and reinvesting in social services, but you know, it is a growing movement. There are a lot of places and people that are pushing forward these goals of care instead of punishment. When I talk to a lot of peers and students, the consensus is also like, this is kind of dumb. Why do we have to walk through metal detectors every single day and have police officers in our schools? What’s going on? So there is a consensus that this isn’t right and it needs to be changed.

MELINDA TUHUS: There’s been a big jump in violence in cities around the country, including New Haven. I don’t know if any of it is related to schools. And it sounds like the overall increase doesn’t change your mind about police in schools?

DAVE CRUZ-BUSTAMENTE: Nope. And I’ll tell you why. So, you see this increase in homicides in New Haven. Literally in my neighborhood, four shootings; two of them homicides. But people fail to realize that the NHPD, the New Haven Police Department, has not been defunded. And on top of that, New Haven is occupied by two other police departments: The Yale Police Department and the Hamden Police Department and has contracts with surrounding towns such as West Haven to also come into New Haven to make arrests and patrol, and you still don’t see a decrease in crime.

And another thing is that a lot of things that come up, for example, the fight that happened at Hillhouse at a football game – these are interpersonal disputes that go on. They are often retaliatory, and they just can’t be solved by police officers who arrive after the scene. If you start thinking about it a little bit, a lot of these issues come from poverty within our neighborhoods. There is a lot, a lot, a lot of inequality in New Haven and poverty in our neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods of color. And that manifests in different ways. You see crime. There are higher asthma rates linked to environmental racism. My point is that a lot of these issues are not going to be solved by police officers, but instead long-term investments in our neighborhoods and social services as alternatives to police officers.

MELINDA TUHUS: I know some parents in different cities who are strongly in favor of police in schools. They felt like they related well to the students and they made the schools safer. Do the parents of the young people working to get rid of SROs support your efforts?

DAVE CRUZ-BUSTAMENTE: Some do and some don’t. Personally, my parents don’t. But that’s why I said Americans are brainwashed into thinking that over-policing and criminalizing black and brown youth is seen as safety. Even our own communities – we fear people in our own communities sometimes, too. So obviously police would seem like a good solution, but, like I said, that hasn’t worked, and it’s been an experiment that governments in New Haven have tried over and over again with new partnerships and partnerships with federal and state agencies.

That’s the thing about young people – notorious for pushing new ideas, because those values of punishment, capitalism, money and property over lives – has not been fully instilled yet into the minds of young people. Once that fully sets in, it’s pretty hard to change your mind that black and brown youth shouldn’t be criminalized 99 perccnt of the time.

So, keep your mind open and try to unlearn your fear and be open to new possibilities, because a new world is possible where all of us live with peace, love and compassion for each other and social duty and responsibility to each other. So keep an open mind and keep pushing and try to challenge your own notions of what safety really is. And take a look at your own neighborhoods if you are privileged and wealthy, because that’s a perfect example of what we want.

For more information, visit the Community First Coalition in CT at communityfirstcoalition.com.