On January 6th — in addition to avowed white supremacy and conspiracy groups — a number of firefighters, police officers, and military reservists joined the mob storming the nation’s Capitol building. In some cases they severely beat fellow law enforcement officers, in other cases flashed police credentials to gain unlawful entry into the Capitol. Law enforcement agencies around the country conducted internal investigations, and some officers have already been fired.

Yet neither the New Bedford Police, the Bristol County Sheriff’s Department, nor the Dartmouth Police Department conducted internal investigations into officers who might have participated in the insurrection. The New Bedford Mayor’s office referred inquires about investigations to the FBI. Chief Cordeiro told a Zoom meeting much the same. A Dartmouth Police spokeswoman said that “at this time” there was no investigation. The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office simply refused to answer our question.

The most charitable explanation is that local law enforcement agencies are waiting to see if the FBI turns up anything. A less charitable, but far more likely, explanation is that police and sheriff’s department are showing their usual disinterest in investigating their own, even for crimes that would permanently disqualify them from serving in any law enforcement capacity ever again. Unfortunately, the public has come to expect responses like this from police agencies that operate with increasing impunity.

Historically, the nation’s sheriffs have been closely identified with slave patrols and white supremacy. Our own local sheriff is a spokesman for the white supremacist anti-immigrant group FAIR, state campaign chair for America’s first openly white supremacist President, and spent considerable time attempting to ingratiate himself with white supremacist presidential immigration advisor Stephen Miller, as information requests by the ACLU, Political Research Associates, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and others reveal. Sheriffs have a long history of racist impunity, as many remember from the Jim Crow era. Since those days, sadly, not enough has changed.

The nation’s police forces are part of a criminal justice system that Elizabeth Warren took heat for calling “racist, top to bottom.” It ought to be unnecessary to point out, especially after George Floyd’s murder, that police forces, especially, have major problems with disproportionate killings, arrests, and assaults on people of color. But then there are the white supremacist chat rooms — from Facebook, Twitter, Gab, and Parler, to Stormfront and others — where a disproportionate number of participants are law enforcement or members of the military.

A 2019 investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting found that hundreds of police were members of neo-Confederate, militia, or white supremacist Facebook groups. The Plain View Project created a database of Facebook posts from self-identified police officers in just eight of America’s 350 cities and found tens of thousands of racist posts by police officers endorsing racial violence and bigotry. What would they have found in the nation’s 15,000+ small towns and in the remaining 342 cities?

In 2010 New Bedford Police officer Paul Hodson encountered a disturbed Guatemalan man and, within three minutes, had killed him by first pepper-spraying him and then kneeling on his back. Hodson, who was only removed from the NBPD after being convicted of child pornography charges, was known to post racist content on social media. The Standard Times printed some of his tame contributions: “After having a great time over the past 2 days spending time with friends and family, its back to work to deal with the scum of the earth,” he posted in 2011. “Time to go to work and violate some civil rights.”

Police forces historically do nothing about racism in the ranks. In the 1990’s a white supremacist gang, the “Vikings,” operated with impunity right under the noses of the brass of the Los Angeles Police Department. Klan affiliations of police and sheriffs were well-known during the Civil Rights years, and police today continue the tradition of breaking Black heads by treating Black Lives Matter activists as terrorists for simply demanding accountability or posting fantasies about running protestors over with their cruisers.

And if you think New Bedford is different from other communities, think again.

Former Bristol County Sheriff’s detective Peter Larkin, who went to work for the New Bedford Schools, was fired in 2019 for posting his own disturbed racist fantasy on Facebook. Angry at Black Lives Matter people protesting in New York City, Larkin wrote, “I would roll tanks and bulldozers. Mush any human in the way. Shoot everyone else. Pile up the bodies and burn them on national tv.” Is this an example of a someone who needs psychological help – or was Larkin simply posturing for fellow ex-cops who drink from the same racist cup?

Whatever the causes — hiring the wrong people or habitually refusing to hold “bad apples” accountable — police racism is both systemic and a self-inflicted societal wound that only radical reform and public control can fix.

The events of January 6th, which far too many law enforcement officers particpated in, provides one more example of why public oversight of police is crucial. Police simply can’t be trusted to investigate themselves. And why would any sensible person even expect them to?

If local law enforcement officers are found to have participated in the January 6^th insurrection, they must be immediately dismissed, stripped of their pensions, and never permitted to betray the Constitution or the public trust again. But since local law enforcement agencies won’t do it themselves, let municipalities investigate. If municipalities won’t do it, then let the state Attorney General conduct credible investigations.

The time for taking white supremacy within the ranks of law enforcement seriously is long overdue.

We know that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts neither the schools nor the police are collecting adequate data on school-based offenses. This is not to single-out New Bedford. It reflects a state-wide, if not a national, lack of interest in tracking at-risk youth.

Many types of data describing the process of a child moving through the juvenile justice system — from schools, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), police, district attorneys, courts, probation, the Department of Youth Services, federal DOE and DOJ mandated data — must be analyzed in order to answer two critical questions about School Resource Officers: (1) does the presence of armed police in schools actually deter violence and mass shootings? and (2) is there a risk to children, particularly children of color, of disproportionate discipline and their early introduction into the criminal justice system?

However, there is some data, and we need to look at it. In January the NAACP New Bedford branch hosted a community discussion of SROs and juvenile justice. One of the invited organizations looked at data which school collect and turn over to DESE. Citizens for Juvenile Justice (CFJJ) obtained DESE data on school discipline in Massachusetts Gateway Cities. Aggregated data is published on the DESE site and there it is possible to look at specific infractions by school or by district. For example, you can find the New Bedford schools here:

From this data we find that in 2018-2019, out of 13,811 students in the entire district, 35 were disciplined for weapons (types unspecified), 69 for threats to other students, zero for sexual assault, 70 for fighting, 508 for battery (which includes any form of contact such as shoving or spitting), 65 for illegal substances, zero for felonies, and 5 for bullying.

But the New Bedford Public Schools already knows this. It’s their data.

The relative absence of violent crime in these numbers suggests that SROs are either unnecessary or are preventing serious crimes currently not being documented. Without data or specifics it is impossible to know which is the case. As the Justice Policy Institute has documented, schools have disciplined and expelled children just for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. To determine if armed police are actually needed in the New Bedford schools, a better analysis of disciplinary cases, then, is necessary to determine which cases actually rose to the level of a crime.

CFJJ obtained the raw data behind the DESE numbers in order to look at discipline by race, gender, disability, economic status, and language.

Using this data CFJJ prepared a statistical analysis for each Gateway City. The New Bedford analysis was one of them. CFJJ looked at overall discipline by race, discipline for students with a disability, students economically disadvantaged, and students whose first language is not English.

The NAACP New Bedford branch obtained CFJF’s DESE data extract. You can download it here. It was possible to reproduce CFJJ’s results and also to crunch the data in additional ways. For example, we can view high school and middle school discipline with greater granularity, and by school. You can download an extract for the New Bedford schools here.

The DESE-supplied data relies on Excel Autofilters, which anyone familiar with the software should be able to apply.

Then, using Excel’s charts, visual respresentations of the data can be produced:

While CFJJ’s Gateway City report looked at discipline by the percentage of, for example, Black students over all students disciplined, it is also possible to look at the percentage of Black students disciplined over only Black students. We found that, within each racial group, Black males were always the statistically most likely to be disciplined — reflecting what national research already shows — even when they represented a smaller proportion of total disciplinary cases.

For example, the chart above for Roosevelt Middle School shows that almost one out of three Black males were disciplined while only one out of five white males were. In fact, the discriminatory over-discipline of Black males is a feature throughout all New Bedford non-elementary schools and also at Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech, whose numbers we also obtained.

Similar analyses can be done for non-English-speakers, students with disabilities, and those living in poverty. As both the ACLU and the American Bar Association point out, students of color with disabilities are especially likely to be injected into the school-to-prison pipeline.

The Sentencing Project recently released a report on racial disparities in youth incarceration in the United States. Guess which state had the 9th worst disparity in Black youth incarceration? Massachusetts. And guess which state was Number One in incarceration disparities for Latino children? Massachusetts. And this follows significant 2018 reforms affecting youth in the criminal justice system.

So why is all this important? Because SROs are frequently asked to handle disciplinary matters that have nothing to do with crimes, and the DESE data CFJJ has published shows that school officials who may ask SROs to intercede are more likely to discipline children of color.

Until the New Bedford Public Schools can prove that the benefits outweigh the risks, we call on Superintendent Anderson to suspend, immediately, their SRO program with the New Bedford Police.

Downloads

• CFJJ / DESE Collection
• NAACP Extract for New Bedford

The 192nd General Court of the Massachusetts Legislature is considering a number of bills related to school resource officers.

The Chapter 69 Criminal Justice reforms and Chapter 253 police reforms now give school superintendents complete discretion to run SRO programs. New legislation also requires schools to collect discipline and arrest data, which for the most part they have failed to do. With school resource officers being advertised by both police departments and school districts as “mentors” and “teachers,” and with even some SROs admitting they are often pressured into being used as disciplinarians by school staff, several new bills make it clear that police in schools are not to replace professional support staff and that their role is solely to deal with clear criminal activity.

• HD.2534 – Lindsay N. Sabadosa (D-First Hampshire) has proposed HD.2534, An Act relative to the location of school resource officers. This bill removes SROs from school grounds and makes it clear that SROs will never replace school counselors, psychologists, or disciplinarians.

• SD.2043 – Harriet L. Chandler (D-First Worcester) has proposed SD.2043, An Act relative to safer schools. This bill makes it clear that SROs will not (i) serve as school disciplinarians, enforcers of school regulations or in place of licensed school psychologists, psychiatrists or counselors; and (ii) use police powers to address traditional school discipline issues, including non-violent disruptive behavior. The bill also prohibits SROs from intervening in all but clearly criminal acts.

• HD.3090 – Kay Khan (D-11th Middlesex) has proposed HD.3090, An Act relative to safer schools. This bill makes it clear that SROs will not (i) serve as school disciplinarians, enforcers of school regulations or in place of licensed school psychologists, psychiatrists or counselors; and (ii) use police powers to address traditional school discipline issues, including non-violent disruptive behavior. The bill also prohibits SROs from intervening in all but clearly criminal acts.

• SD.180 – Sonia Chang-Diaz (D-Second Suffolk) has proposed SD.180, An Act to prioritize violence prevention and social emotional health in school support staff hiring. In the event that schools keep SROs, it should not be at the expense of professional support staff. This bill requires at least seven “Mental and social emotional health support personnel” for every SRO and requires DESE to document compliance.

• HD.2748 – Brandy Fluker Oakley (D-12th Suffolk) has proposed HD.2748, An Act to prioritize violence prevention and social emotional health in school support staff hiring. In the event that schools keep SROs, it should not be at the expense of professional support staff. This bill requires at least seven “Mental and social emotional health support personnel” for every SRO and requires DESE to document compliance.

Republicans didn’t care much for the Chapter 69 Criminal Justice reforms passed in 2018 and no sooner did the Chapter 253 police reforms go into effect on January 1st than they began devising ways to return to the good old days when police controlled school hallways, not superintendents.

• SD.856 – Patrick M. O’Connor (R-Plymouth and Norfolk) has proposed SD.856, An Act Creating a School Resource Officer Grant Program and Fund. This bill establishes a state-administered fund to be shared only with communities who adopt SRO programs, and funds must be matched by local communities. The Commissioner of Public Safety (a political appointment) appears to exert significant influence in grant awards.

• SD.857 – Patrick M. O’Connor (R-Plymouth and Norfolk) has proposed SD.857, An Act promoting local control and effective training of school resource officers. This bill returns appointments of SROs exclusively to police chiefs, despite the title’s claim to restore community control.

• SD.2171 – Bruce E. Tarr (R-First Essex and Middlesex) has proposed SD.2171, An Act relative to school safety issues. This bill replaces superintendent’s discretionary appointment of SROs with an appointment by the Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Two additional bills with SRO provisions from James Arciero and Walter Timilty seem to be cases of Democrats pandering to the police lobby. A third stange bill from Cynthia Creem is sure to offer both opponents of SROs and opponents of gun control something to jointly despise.

• HD.2052 – James Arciero (D-2nd Middlesex) has proposed HD.2052, Resolve establishing an Enhanced Public School Safety Commission. This resolution would create a commission to study placing bulletproof glass, classroom surveillance, and retired police officers in schools.

• SD.769 – Walter F. Timilty (D-Norfolk, Bristol and Plymouth) has proposed SD.769, An Act relative to school safety and security. This bill involves school resource officers in a requirement to hold live intruder drills within 90 days of the beginning of the school year.

• SD.1506 – Cynthia Stone Creem (D-1st Middlesex and Norfolk) has proposed SD.1506, An Act relative to firearms and firearms violence. This bill sets up a Firearms Violence Prevention Trust Fund, which among other things, prioritizes “programs that support the provision of school resource officers.” Revenue for the fund comes from a 4.5% tax on guns and ammunition sales.