While I'm not at all convinced that cops are running wild in NYC public schools, kudos to Herbert  (below) for drawing attention to a man who appears to be a rogue officer (and that there appear to be at least a handful of others like him):

Then I found out through other sources that Officer Gonzalez had gotten into trouble for stalking, kissing and otherwise harassing a 17-year-old girl at another high school in the Bronx. The girl, extremely upset over the unwanted advances, notified school authorities and they notified the Police Department.

Herbert is also likely correct that this is a problem: "There is an astounding reluctance to criticize or properly discipline police officers, no matter how egregious their conduct."

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My friend James Forman (Georgetown law professor, co-founder of Maya Angelou Charter School in DC and blogger at: http://extracredit.wordpress.com/) took issue with my skepticism in my last email about Herbert's claim that police are running wild in NYC public schools.  Here's his email (shared with permission), followed by my reply:

Whitney: I'm curious to know why you are inclined to reject Herbert's criticisms of police officers.  Your instincts about teachers are just the opposite -- sometimes you send out instances of crazy teaching practices in schools.  Many of the same things that protect teachers who don't teach well also protect officers who don't police well: low barriers to entry, poor training, very strong unions, administrators who do not take the time to write people up and jump through the hurdles needed to get rid of the bad ones, a culture of low-expectations in too many schools, etc.  Indeed, the same low expectations that allow terrible teaching practice to go on allow terrible policing practices to go on.  Too many people think poor kids don't matter that much.  So basically, all of your trenchant analysis that you apply to teaching also applies to policing.  But when confronted with evidence of widespread bad practice, your instinct in one domain is to accept it, and in the other it is to reject it. 

You are not alone, by the way.  One thing that has long shocked me is how smart people have really high standards for teachers and really low ones for police officers.  Both of these groups have a tremendous influence on poor communities, and we should have high standards for both.  I know most of your work has been with middle schools and younger, but you should get out there and talk to low-income high school kids about policing practices.  My guess is that you will find them saying many of the same things about bad policing as they say about bad teaching in their former schools. 

Here's a link to a piece that I wrote for The New Republic that describes some of the experiences Maya Angelou kids have had with the police, and discusses why this is an issue that not just liberals should care about: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jrf27/pdf_files/arrested_development_forman09102001.pdf 

Finally, we can discuss this later, but your line about not wanting to take officers out of schools surprised me too.  I would be curious if you polled your friends at KIPP and Achievement First.  I bet many of them create safe schools without resort to police officers, or if they have officers, they use them in a radically different way than the schools Herbert is writing about.  One of the problems is that schools with bad educational practices also tend to use police in bad ways, and allow them to throw their weight around inappropriately, intimidate kids, do pat downs when they feel like it, etc.  At Maya, we never had police officers or metal detectors, and now we have one at one campus only because it was a free service of the city and we use him as a true "officer friendly" greeter at the front door.  He's as much a social worker as anything else (which is a big part of being a good police officer, by the way).  We would never tolerate for one minute the stuff that Herbert is describing, and if an officer did that to one of our kids we would react just as if a teacher did, and get rid of the person immediately.  My guess is that other school leaders you respect have the same view.

Here was my reply:

I read your article, really enjoyed it -- and agree with it.  There is no room for the type of abuse that you -- or Herbert -- describe, and I have no doubt that plenty of it goes on in the streets.  The question is whether a lot of it goes on in the schools, by the officers assigned to the schools.  That's what I'm skeptical of.  Here's why (keeping in mind that I don't know for sure -- this is conjecture): In the schools, relative to the streets, you have younger, "better" kids (the ones who haven't dropped out), a controlled environment (usually), lots of witnesses and the students having immediate recourse to teachers, the assistant principal, the principal, etc.

 

Another telling piece of evidence is that Herbert -- who's clearly approaching this with a conclusion already formed and it looking for the juciest story he can find, with over 1,400 schools with 1+ million students to choose from, and what's the most incriminating story he can find?  Gonzalez?!  As abhorent as Gonzalez's behavior was (assuming you believe the girl's story, which I do), he isn't in the same universe as real rogue cops (think Abner Louima)...

 

As for cops in schools, it never occurred to me that there would be no security officers at all -- is that what you mean?  Obviously schools like yours or KIPP don't need such a presence, but many middle and esp. high schools are going to need some sort of security for a long time.  Given this, my point is that it's far better to have trained police officers rather than much more poorly paid, poorly trained DOE security force -- talk about a recipe for disaster!

And his reply:

I need to think some about your response.  I agree with you in general that is likely less common in schools.  That said, I just glanced at the ACLU report, and I think it is worth pausing before we assume that this is so rare as not to be a problem.  The rate is probably much less than on the streets, but enough that smart people should pay attention to the issue. 

Regarding security presence in schools, I need to think about what my ideal would be, in light of the imperfect world we live in.  The ACLU report does not argue with taking cops out of schools, but instead says school principals should have authority of them, just like they have authority over the rest of the building.  If the police are going to be there, I strongly agree with that.  I would take a look at the reference to the Julia Richman Academy (page 24), which the ACLU report cites as a best practice and is a NY school (Coalition of Small Schools).   I've been to that building because my stepfather teaches at Urban Academy, one of the small high schools that is part of the building.  I would be arguing for that sort of approach to security citywide.  If this is a best practice, and I think it probably is, we should be pushing for its implementation right now across the city.  I guess my main point, which I think you agree with, is that all of us ed reformers should make sure these issues are part of our area of concern because they are quite important in the lives of the kids we care about.  

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July 7, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

A Girl’s Fear and Loathing

By BOB HERBERT

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/opinion/07herbert.html

In a column earlier this week I wrote about a cop who grotesquely abused his power by invading a high school classroom in the Bronx because a girl had uttered a curse word in a hallway. Not only did the cop handcuff and arrest the girl in a room filled with stunned students and a helpless teacher, but he arrested the school’s principal, who had attempted to reason with the officer.