— Mister Thrope
I suppose I should contribute to the public opinion on this subject. From 2007 to 2011, I was an assistant principal in Chicago Public Schools. During that time, I had the mixed experience of working with several off and sometimes on-duty police officers. Ergo, I have some real life experience dealing with something that Her Honor, Mayor Lightfoot is going to have to rule on. Overall, I found that I really had no way of knowing if the police would solve a difficult problem (which they sometimes did), or take a bad situation and make it worse (which they also sometimes did).
As an AP, my first school was located on Chicago’s lower west side, not far from University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). This was a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, because UIC had been steadily using its status to take over Maxwell Street, as well as the homes of many of our former students, even as far as Pilsen on the near south side. The school was about 85% African American and 15% White and Latino. We had two police assigned to the school as part of their beat, and three police hired part time (at different times) .
The assigned police were two women. One was white, with a name that only 60’s flower parents could have given her. Her partner was a Latina, who told me once that every holiday she had to deal with her idiot gangster relatives. They were unquestionably fantastic at settling problems in the school and at telling us what had been going on in the neighborhood. With no attempt at sarcasm or hyperbole, they were a gigantic help.
One part time officer we hired for afternoons. I liked and trusted him. One day he brought a kid to my office in cuffs, who had clearly been pummeled about the head. He told me that the kid (refer to him as W), had been acting crazy in the lunch line and that he had taken him out of the line to talk. Then, he said the kid got angry and tried to put him in a head lock. After years of thinking about this, I’m still not sure where I fall on what actually happened. I had to take the police’s word for it, because our security guard had witnessed it. Still, that guard’s word proved to be questionable later in the year (it was my first year there). Although this kid was a real ass, in retrospect, I have trouble picturing him manning up on a real cop. Still, I had to go with it at the time, and after a long fight, we got him expelled (just from the school. He went to another building and still graduated from 8th grade).
The guy that replaced him was much less aggressive. This was true even though there were several instances where the kids challenged him directly. One awful 3rd grader actually threw rocks at him, which he did nothing about. That wasn’t going to work either.
His replacement was a bad, bad dream. His worst act was in defending me. I locked this kid’s illegal cell phone in a desk and said he’d get it back when his grandmother came in for it. He lost his mind, broke open the desk, took his phone, and pushed me out of the way as he ran out the door. C, the cop, ran after him and ended up bringing him in to the station. I saw a picture of him later, and C messed him up pretty badly. The kid was a sphincter muscle, and deserved some serious juvenile trouble. But he did not deserve to get beaten up. I started to keep my eye on C and noticed that I was coming up with issues with his every action. He made more arrests including some that were questionable or unnecessary. I resolved not to hire him the next year. Then the building got turned into a charter school, so I had to find a new job. My decision became irrelevant.
The next school was in West Englewood on the south side. The school was nearly 100% African American and no gentrification of this neighborhood was happening anytime soon. The school was located along the border between the Madville and Blood Money crews. When they weren’t fighting, stealing cars, or dealing, they thought of the school as the local Wal Mart. In addition, West Englwood was where many people who used to live in the Robert Taylor homes (formerly the world’s largest housing project) ended up. In some cases, they brought with them family rivalries going back decades.
Our assigned officer was Sergeant B. We didn’t get along at first. Our first week, we had a multi family melee which he helped break up. He got on his hind legs with me, because I was a little upset after having to disarm a parent who was going to brain someone with a standing coat rack. If you know me, then you know that I am no martial arts expert and the fact that I had to get involved in this would have been funny if it were happening to someone else. Anyway, the Sergeant and I ended up getting along. He helped me a couple of times when shit just got out of hand. I remember he once took down this 13 year old boy who was always threatening me or our Dean of Students, or just about any other adult. Sergeant B threw him onto the floor and let him know he couldn’t just do anything he wanted. But he didn’t abuse him or bring him into the Audie Home, or any other more severe measure. In other words, he acted like a cop.
We hired one part time officer (I’ll name him M). He was very good. He stayed out of everything unless it truly was a police matter. I remember we had to chase a big 6th grade boy who had punched out a girl from his grade and her family was looking for him with the unsmiling intention of sending him to County hospital or to Gatlin’s Chapel. I didn’t particularly like the kid but I didn’t want him to get badly hurt or killed. Officer M helped me chase him down, and after getting on the horn, he said “Officer needs assistance.” You wouldn’t believe how fast the response was. Anyway, he was a help, but had to leave when his regular work hours were changed.
The officer we then hired had, believe it or not, a teaching certificate. I forgot his name. He was one of those cops that thought that you dealt with a kid who threw a raisin in the cafeteria the same way you deal with a car full of gangsters at 2:30 in the morning. We had one 8th grader who was a real thug. But he was also smart and personable, and he performed all of his dirt outside of school. He said something to another student that rubbed the officer the wrong way and he roughed this kid up, then putting him handcuffs that obviously were too tight and hurting him. This event I missed, but our middle school teachers saw the whole thing. 3 out of the 4 of them were black women, and they were all outraged. We got rid of him, but the damage to our relationship with the students was done.
It is incumbent upon me to come up with a recommendation. I empathize with the notion of not having police in the elementary schools. On the other hand, there is a small groups of kids who recognize no authority, including that of their parents. This is true at practically every school (including the affluent one I attended). At the same time schools in CPS have largely dispensed with suspension except in the most extreme cases. I know there as other ways of dealing with difficult children. But if we are going to use peer juries, restitution, counseling, and check in systems, we have to all understand that it will cost more, not always be effective, and requires the effort of the problem children, their parents, the victimized children, their parents, the administration, and ultimately the entire community. Without all of that, it will be another failed reform attempt.
All of the police except for the first two were black males. If you think that means that this is not a race issue, you’re lying to me or to yourself.
I’m adding this because a solution must be able to deal with situations like this: On a 2009 morning, an 8th grade girl attacked another one in the cafeteria. She was fast and angry, and before I could get over there, the aggressor had torn off the other’s shirt as they starting punching each other. The resulting fight included at least 10 girls. Our principal was a black woman who grew up less than a mile from there. Attendance was one way that we were being judged as a school. Despite that, the boss said we had to be perceived to be the ones in charge of the school. I thus wrote up six 10-day suspensions and at least three lesser ones. We didn’t have more problems like that during that year. We did, however, get seriously chided for low attendance. This is what we sometimes have to fix.
Out here.
Bittersweet Abattoir 