MPS votes to end police service contracts
Officers can be called in, but won’t patrol area
The Milwaukee Public Schools board has voted unanimously to stop paying Milwaukee police officers to patrol outside its buildings and events, the latest district to sever police contracts in the wake of protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody last month.
Board members also agreed to end all contracts and negotiations to buy or maintain what the resolution called “criminalizing equipment,” such as metal detectors, and facial recognition and social media monitoring software.
Details and ramifications of the vote have yet to be ironed out, including: whether the district can terminate one of the contracts, which is required by state law; what is MPS’ legal liability if someone is harmed at one of its buildings; and how the district plans to reinvest the savings from the contracts.
Board members called it a “step in the right direction.” But it is not going to eliminate interactions between students and police.
“We can’t stop police from coming into our buildings. And anybody in a building — teachers, administrators, even parents outside of school — can call and have police come to the school,” said board President Larry Miller.
“The issue for us was ending these contracts and doing what our students want us to be doing (with those dollars).” The board’s decision followed weeks of demonstrations across the country that have focused on the militarization of police agencies and the use of excessive force, particularly against black and brown young people.
The vote was a victory for the youth advocacy group Leaders Igniting Transformation, the Black Educators Caucus MKE and others who have pushed for the district to stop the use of school resource officers, metal detectors and other policies it argues criminalize student behaviors and feed what is derided by many as the school-to-prison pipeline.
“Tonight, young people of color in Milwaukee made history. This has been a long time coming,” Cendi Tena, high school organizing director for LIT, said immediately following the vote Thursday.
“Youth of color advocated very hard against the criminalization of black and brown students. They organized heavily, consistently shared their experiences and their stories. They earned it. This is their victory.”
MPS is the state’s largest district, serving almost 75,000 students, mostly young people of color. Districts in several cities have terminated police contracts or taken steps toward that end in recent weeks, including Minneapolis, Denver, Oakland and Portland, Oregon.
Unlike many districts that employ school resource officers, MPS does not post them inside its buildings. It ended that practice in 2016 in response to complaints about police unnecessarily
citing and arresting students for incidents that could have been handled as disciplinary matters by the district.
Since then, it has funded the salaries and benefits of several officers — the Milwaukee Police Department funds others — who patrol the neighborhoods around some schools, monitor dismissal periods, staff some athletic events and other activities, and respond quickly if called to a school.
Those officers are supposed to have specialized training in de-escalation and restorative practice techniques and working with young people, according to Miller.
In all, MPS budgeted just more than $1 million on police contracts for the 2019-20 school year and was projected to spend about $613,000 next year. The plan calls for those funds to be reinvested in other programs intended to improve student safety and relationships.
District flooded with messages
The resolution to terminate the contracts was put forward by two women of color, board members Sequanna Taylor, who is Black, and Paula Phillips, who is Filipina.
The vote followed testimony by more than two dozen speakers, all in support, who argued that school resource officers do not make schools safer, that police violence is disproportionately directed at black and brown people, and that hiring police to patrol schools is contrary to their mission.
More than 900 others flooded the district with emails and letters overwhelmingly supporting the resolution. At least five people registered in opposition to the resolution, including a retired school resource officer who had worked in a suburban district and argued that officers make schools safer, but that the key is hiring the right officers.
In advocating for the measure, Taylor recited the names of men and women of color — some in Milwaukee, some elsewhere — killed by police or vigilantes: Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Dontre Hamilton and others, saying these could have been her own sons, her nephew, her cousin.
“I’ve heard from many students that having police in schools does not present a positive effect,” she said. “And while I understand the need for police, I do not understand the need for them directly in our schools.”
Phillips acknowledged the decision may be “scary for people who have relationships that are positive with police.”
“But a majority of our students, our students of color, are not treated with respect by the system,” she said. “There are only so many times we can make an old system work for relationship building. And to see it fail over and over ... You just can’t keep doing the same thing.”
The Milwaukee Police Department has said repeatedly that it supports MPS and will continue to work
“We agree with the many voices from our community who believe that the funding should be reinvested into our public school system to support social services.” Milwaukee Police Department
with the district regardless of whether it pulled out of the contracts.
“We agree with the many voices from our community who believe that the funding should be reinvested into our public school system to support social services,” MPD said in a statement Thursday.
And on Friday, Mayor Tom Barrett’s office said in an email to the Journal Sentinel that the department “will continue to ensure students, families and residents remain safe at or outside of school events.”
Miller said the district will be meeting with its attorneys, Milwaukee city officials and community partners in the coming weeks to determine how to move forward.
One hurdle is the state’s Truancy Abatement Burglary Suppression statute, which requires MPS to pay the city for four officers, at a cost of about $400,000 a year. The resolution calls for the district’s lobbyists to begin efforts to overturn the law.
In the meantime, he said, the district will reach out to Barrett and Common Council President Cavalier Johnson on a possible work-around. One idea, he said, would be for MPS to pay the city, but have the city return the money to the district rather than put it into policing.
Johnson could not be reached by telephone Friday. But Barrett’s office said in its Friday statement that it would work with the MPS and the state Legislature “to determine how we move forward.”