Black, Brown, and Over-Policed in L.A. Schools
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Black, Brown, and Over-Policed in L.A. Schools: Structural Proposals to End the School-to-Prison Pipeline in the Los Angeles Unified School District and to Build a National Movement to Stop the Mass Incarceration of Black and Latino Communities A report by Community Rights Campaign of the Labor/Community Strategy Center October 2013 Black, Brown and Over-Policed in LA Schools Structural Proposals to End the School-to-Prison Pipeline in the Los Angeles Unified School District and to Build a National Movement to Stop the Mass Incarceration of Black and Latino Communities. About the authors The Community Rights Campaign is a project of the The Community Rights Campaign’s grassroots Labor/Community Strategy Center. The Community organizing model is led by Haewon Asfaw, Carlos Rights Campaign’s lead organizers are Manuel “Elmo” Gomez, Carla Gonzalez, and Melissa “Mello” Criollo, Ashley Franklin, and Barbara Lott-Holland. Lemus. We are leading a long-term campaign to challenge While we take sole responsibility for this report and suppressive, pre-prison conditions in Los Angeles any errors it may contain, we want to acknowledge public schools. We believe it is parents, teachers, and all the organizations who are helping to build a students—not police, tickets, and courts—who will lead movement to end the school-to-prison pipeline, many the way to transforming our schools. of whom are named herein. Since our launch in 2007, the Community Rights Thank you to the hundreds of young people, Campaign has built a grassroots civil and human parents, teachers, organizers and leaders who are the rights movement of youth, teachers, parents, and Community Rights Campaign. Our movement is the community members that works with advocacy engine of history. organizations and decision-makers to break from exclusionary “zero tolerance” discipline policies that Writing, Research, Editorial: Jim Freeman, Daniel criminalize Black and Brown youth and establish real Kim, Zoe Rawson alternatives that can transform the school climate to Design: Burt Vera Cruz support students, protect their rights, and keep them Maps: Adriana Quiquivix in school and away from a jail cell. Data support: Julian Lamb 2 BLACK, BROWN, AND OVERPOLICED IN L.A. SCHOOLS | COMMUNITY RIGHTS CAMPAIGN communities. 200,000 people were incarcerated Section 1 in the 60s; today 2.5 million people are behind bars, nearly 60% of them Black and Latino. It would have been difficult in 1963 to imagine that the U.S. Introduction government would initiate a War on Poverty and then reverse it by launching a war on the poor, slashing the THE CIVIL RIGHTS CROSSROADS social services legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt under a two-party pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” th This report is being issued on the 50 anniversary And for anyone who was moved by Dr. King’s dream year of the March on Washington. All who gathered of true racial equality for “all of God’s children,” the there and who looked on with such hope in 1963 could creation of a “school-to-prison pipeline” for Black and foresee hard fought victories on the horizon: finally Brown youth would have been incomprehensible. defeating legal racial segregation and passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Yet it HOPE, CONTRADICTION AND A CALL would have been hard for them to imagine the election FOR LEADERSHIP IN LOS ANGELES of the first Black president of the United States only 45 SCHOOLS years later. Today the Los Angeles public school system is at In 1963, at such a time of hope, it would have been a parallel moment of hope and contradiction. In just as hard to imagine that four decades later the U.S. the last two years, through dramatic reductions in would have become the world’s largest jailer, with truancy and tardy ticketing under the Daytime Curfew mass incarceration enveloping whole Black and Latino law and most recently through the passage of the BLACK, BROWN, AND OVERPOLICED IN L.A. SCHOOLS | COMMUNITY RIGHTS CAMPAIGN 3 WHO ARE LAUSD School Climate Bill of Rights,1 Los Angeles has made Daytime Curfew. significant progress in reversing “zero tolerance” LAMC 45.04 was the STUDENTS? disciplinary policies that repress and criminalize the #1 cause of police overwhelmingly Black and Latino youth of the public referrals of students uu662,000 students, 2nd school system. For some, these reforms are seen as into the juvenile largest school district encouraging first steps; for others, they represent the system from LAUSD, population in the country end of the road. This report argues that while we have the country’s second after NYC made very encouraging initial changes in policy, more largest school district. structural, comprehensive, and enforceable remedies uu88% students of color, are urgently needed. Police had been including 72% Latino, 10% sweeping up and Black, 10% white, 4% Asian For those of us who work every day with the youth of ticketing more than uu80% qualify for free or the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), we 10,000 public school reduced cost lunch understand only too well that when students arrive students every year, at school, many of them have already “overcome” over 90% youth of uu56% graduation rate almost unimaginable conditions of overcrowding, color, for being absent unemployment, hunger, poor housing, poor public or late to school. Most transportation, medical problems, and family stress. LAUSD Black and Latino working class, low-income While the LAUSD and its School Police Department families could simply not afford the $250 tickets, the (LASPD) are not responsible for those conditions, additional $1000 in court fees, and the missed days of we can all agree that the role of public schools in work to attend the required court hearings. Unpaid communities experiencing great poverty and societal fines accumulated over the past decade have resulted discrimination is to do everything we can to create in driver’s license holds for upwards of 300,000 youth, a supportive, tolerant, appreciative school climate many of whom are now adults.3 and end the criminalization of their childhood and adolescence. ROLLING BACK TRUANCY TICKETING, SHIFTING THE PUBLIC DEBATE DAYTIME CURFEW: A GATEWAY FROM SCHOOL TO JAIL It took six years of uphill organizing to roll back LAMC 45.04. The Community Rights Campaign In February 2012, Los Angeles was the site of one of engaged thousands of youth, parents, teachers, the most important breakthroughs in recent years for community members and allies to speak out against the national movement to end the criminalization the educational, civil and human rights harms that of youth in public schools that leads toward the go beyond the tickets themselves. By systematically mass incarceration of Black and Latino people. The enabling and encouraging punitive ticketing at school, Community Rights Campaign led a broad effort—with this curfew law had been a literal gateway to juvenile our allies ACLU and Public Counsel, the support of court, and in some cases even juvenile detention, for the L.A. Chapter of the Dignity in Schools Campaign,2 many of our youth. On February 12, 2013, we packed and the outstanding leadership of former L.A. city council chambers and won a 14-0 unanimous vote Councilmember, now Congressman Tony Cardenas— led by Councilmembers Tony Cardenas and Bernard to amend Los Angeles Municipal Code 45.04, the 4 BLACK, BROWN, AND OVERPOLICED IN L.A. SCHOOLS | COMMUNITY RIGHTS CAMPAIGN 2006-2007 CRC launches 3500 campaign to decriminalize 3,341 tardiness and truancy April 2011 LAPD directive 2,855 to scale back truancy ticketing 2625 August 2011 CRC holds community forum with Judge Nash and School Attendance Task Force 1750 Sept 2011 City Councillor 1,618 Tony Cardenas introduces motion to amend LAMC 45.04 Total LASPD Oct 2011 LASPD directive to 875 scale back truancy ticketing Truancy Tickets Feb 2012 City Council DAYTIME CURFEW VIOLATION CITATIONS, passes LAMC 45.04 YEARLY THROUGH MAY 2013 209 amendment 0 2009-2010 2010-2011 2011-2012 2012-2013 (through May) Parks to radically reduce the tickets and fines imposed that addresses push-out policies such as suspensions on students. for “Willful Defiance” and commits to defining and limiting the role of school police on campus. Today in LAUSD, the most visible signs of the Daytime Curfew—the morning “tardy sweeps” by These movement victories sent waves around the police in front of schools, cafeterias turned into country because they mark an historic turn away ticketing stations—have nearly ended. The fines of from decades of “zero tolerance” school discipline $250 and more, with mandatory court appearances, policy. As the public debate has shifted, there seems have been virtually eliminated, truancy and tardy to be growing momentum for reversing the pre-prison citations by the school police department are down by environments of public schools. as much as 80%, and youth having serious attendance problems are being sent to counselors instead of REAL PROGRESS, BUT IS IT ENOUGH? courtrooms. Officials now talk of “being there for youth and listening” In this report, we examine new LAUSD school policing School police instead of “zero data for the previous school year (2012-2013). And we ticketing across tolerance.” Recently, compare it against data for the year prior (2011-2012).4 LAUSD took another Through this comparison, the data gives us a picture all categories is step responding to of significant early progress that must be protected and down by as much community organizing supported. LAUSD and LASPD have reduced truancy as 50%. by passing a School ticketing by 80%. School police ticketing across all Climate Bill of Rights categories is down by as much as 50%.