Put Cops Back in High Schools

Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes is right. In the wake of the latest fatal school shooting, this one in Georgia, Barnes is once again asking the Madison school district to return police officers to its high schools.

It never made any sense to remove these cops in the first place. Officers had been in the schools for a couple of decades without incident. They got to know the students and staff and the physical layout of the buildings. As a result they were able to defuse situations that might have become dangerous. Moreover, mostly people of color and women, they provided positive role models.

And, yes, if a student or someone else came to a school with the intent of killing people the officers had a better chance of subduing that person before he was able to carry out his attack.

Moreover, it’s not as if cops don’t end up spending a lot of time in our high schools anyway. In the 2022-2023 school year the police responded to over 800 calls to Madison schools and that included 49 threats, 20 fights and 17 weapons offenses. How many of those calls could have been avoided if an officer had been embedded in those schools and could have gotten on top of things before they got out of hand? And, by the way, should we just casually accept schools in which there is this level violence? Anybody wonder why this district is losing students in the fastest growing county in the state?

And how many of the kids involved in those incidents ended up being arrested? The opponents of cops in schools say it contributes to the “school to prison pipeline.” But is there any evidence that the pipeline (if it exists) has been shut off now that the cops are gone? In fact, I suspect that there are more arrests now than there were before the police were removed.

The Madison School Board, which lives in an alternative universe, rejected Barnes’ responsible request out of hand. The board chair accused Barnes of “politicizing” the Georgia school shooting. But the cops were removed precisely because of politics. In the hysteria surrounding the killing of George Floyd in 2020 longtime ideological opponents of cops in schools saw their opening and loudly demanded their removal. There were no good, practical reasons to do this. They were removed because of political pressure fueled by abstract ideological fervor.

Barnes probably knows he’s fighting a losing battle with this school board, which is simply a group of hard-left ideologues. What it will take is new superintendent Joe Gothard to intervene on behalf of Barnes, common sense and the safety of teachers and staff. But will he?