Why Are Cops Putting Kids in Cuffs? New at Reason

When 14-year-old Ryan Turk cut ahead of the lunch line to grab a milk, he didn’t expect to get in trouble. He certainly didn’t plan to end up in handcuffs. But Turk, a black student at Graham Park Middle School, was arrested for disorderly conduct and petty larceny for procuring the 65-cent carton. The state of Virginia is actually prosecuting the case, which went to trial in November.

Chief among the many ironies of this story is that Turk didn’t actually steal anything: He participates in Virginia’s free lunch program, which entitles him to one complimentary carton of milk each day. On the afternoon in question, Turk had forgotten to claim his drink during his first pass through the line, so he went back. That’s when the trouble started, for a very specific reason: A police officer spotted him and misunderstood what was happening. A police officer. In the cafeteria.

Graham Park Middle School is among the roughly 43 percent of public schools in the U.S. with a School Resource Officer (SRO): a cop specifically assigned to patrol the school. SROs exist ostensibly to keep students safe and classrooms crime-free. But the staggering increase in their ranks over the last several decades has produced thousands of questionable suspensions and arrests. Many due process advocates and education reformers now wonder if the presence of so many cops is actually undermining school discipline.

“If the police intervene and have to get involved, there’s a good probability that there’s going to be an arrest,” explains Chet Epperson, a retired Rockford, Illinois, police chief who is critical of the notion that law enforcement should handle school discipline. “We think that juveniles should be treated from a rehabilitation standpoint. Well, that sort of runs counter to having cops in schools.”

It shouldn’t fall to law enforcement to scold unruly kids: That’s a job for teachers, principals, and parents. Unfortunately, bad incentives—including state laws that limit school disciplinary options and federal programs that explicitly subsidize SROs—give schools plenty of reasons to keep hiring cops. Getting rid of those incentives would improve things, but the best solution might lie outside traditional schooling entirely. For students around the country, school choice reforms—which engender new and different ways of thinking about discipline—are already offering a vision for a saner system.

Because there’s got to be a better way to teach a kid to wait his turn in the lunch line.

View this article.