We can't police our way out of school violence

Edmonton teenager Karanveer Sahota was stabbed on April 8, just outside Mcnally High School. The incident and Sahota's tragic death at the age of 16 a week later have shaken the Mcnally school community. Seven youths have been charged over the attack. Many students of the school are traumatized. Some have expressed to parents their wish to transfer their studies.

This is sad and heartbreaking on many levels. Children should feel safe in their schools. This incident devastates the victim's family and mars the memories of young children about their school.

Arguments are being made in some quarters on why the Edmonton Public Schools board (EPSB) suspended its school resource officer (SRO) program. The underlying assumption is that the attack could have been prevented if there was a police officer assigned to Mcnally. The arguments raise improbable expectations in jurisdictions that currently have SROS and muddy the water for those trying to reimagine school security.

If Mcnally had an SRO on site, the officer might be engaging with students in their office or at the gym or other part of the school. They might also be in their office reading a book or completing a report. The notion of a lone police officer (or two) acting like Spider-man to prevent the stabbing stretches the boundaries of credulity and ignores decades of research on crime. It is worth noting that the bus stop was outside the school. The fact is, we will never know if an SRO could have stopped the attack. Anything else is pure speculation.

There is a tendency to exaggerate or underestimate the impact of SROS depending on what argument is being made and by whom. SROS and police services in general do not have a strong record of preventing major acts of violence in schools.

For example, a Florida newspaper notes that an officer, Scot Peterson, at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where there was a mass shooting in 2018, was “considered a trusted school resource officer at Stoneman Douglas, according to annual reviews of his performance.”

As of August 2021, Peterson was fighting charges of criminal negligence. His defence is predicated on the idea that “he does not meet the legal definition of a caregiver as defined in Florida law.” That may be summarized as “I cannot be held liable for what happened at the school.” Public attention has since shifted to his $8,702.35 per month pension.

We cannot police our way out of every social problem. Each episode of school violence speaks to much broader issues beyond policing and officers have biophysical limitations like all of us — they cannot be everywhere at one time.

Those who strongly oppose SRO programs tend to minimize the level of support and mentoring several children receive. Research shows that recipients of SRO magnanimity tend to be mainly middle-class white children (unless they identify as LGBTQIA2S+), athletes and top academic performers of diverse backgrounds.

Those whose children benefit from the program also tend to underestimate the degree of harm minority children suffer from police intervention over largely minor issues and constant searches of backpacks and physical harassment.

This is no personal opinion. Results of scholarly research on the role and efficacy of SRO programs in North America are inconclusive at best or contradictory at worst. That is the empirically verifiable messy and complicated context of SRO programs. The two opposing sides have to find a way to “see” each other.

As I noted in a recent column, the SRO program is a 1950s invention of the U.S. The American Federation of Teachers, which was founded in 1916 and represents 1.7 million members, passed a resolution in 2020 regarding school safety and policing. The resolution states that the “necessary function of school safety should be separated from policing and police forces.”

The EPSB'S decision to review the SRO program is sensible action. It is the first of its kind (to my knowledge) since the program was introduced in Edmonton in 1979. There is a need to wait for the report and its recommendations. We have to learn from the Mcnally tragedy, support those impacted and think school or public safety rather than the much narrower focus on policing.