Description: Civil Liberties, Technology, and Miscellany
This is a slightly expanded version of a twitter thread I posted yesterday. Prompted by a tweet from my friend, Jean Josey , I’ve been thinking a lot about the school shootings and the presence of police in schools (e.g., so-called “School Resource Officers).
As was noted in a number of articles on the Oxford High School Shoot, a sheriff’s deputy regularly stationed at the high school helped apprehend the shooter. Naturally, the response by the Michigan legislature is to propose putting more money towards police in schools .
The growth in the use of police in schools occurred during the 1990s, a time of much higher crime rates, the (false) fear of the creation of “super predators,” and high-profile school shootings like Columbine. One driver was federal funding provided by the COPS in Schools program passed after the Columbine shooting.