KRIS ENGSTRAND Do not banish school resource officers

As a law enforcement veteran and parent of school-age children, I can rest easy knowing they and their classmates can learn in a safe environment.

For this, I credit and thank, our faculty and administration, and local school resource officers, whose job it is to keep our kids safe.

However, such a safe school atmosphere may soon give way to political grandstanding, as those in public office look to create new bureaucracies and red tape for our schools, jeopardizing the safety of Connecticut’s children.

Legislation now in Hartford, bill No. 447 (LCO No. 2533), before the Joint Committee on Education, would create a process to totally eliminate school resource officers from any public school in our state.

You read that right, school resource officers would be banished from our land, regardless of the school district’s wishes or needs of school superintendents or town mayors.

It would leave Connecticut with a one-size-fits-all policy. Cops on school grounds would be illegal and unwanted, thanks to our legislators!

In Stamford, we have an officer at each of our two public high schools. They are there for the protection of the students, teachers, administrators, and the facility. They also help when there are major events, such as large sports events or perhaps a prom.

We must not permit the divisive rhetoric from the last national elections to cause such impulsive lawmaking extremism.

Let us just admit that in Connecticut, the very well organized defund police political lobby scored a decisive legislative victory in 2020.

That said, now we must not let the whiplash of the political ideological divide weaken the protective environment provided for our children, society’s most precious commodity.

I have known countless quality individuals who have served as school resource officers. They are valuable contributors to their school communities. These are not simply officers yanked off the beat, rather they are trained and sensitized to the critical role they play on campuses.

When our children go to school each morning, parents should not have to worry about their safety, nor must students be distracted from learning.

We have all read the sad stories about school violence. As community leaders it’s our duty to protect, rather than further expose, Connecticut’s youth to harm.

What happens when bullies or even gang members no longer see the physical, visible presence of officers? Will it be up to teachers or school social workers to intercede? These employees are not permitted to intervene in physical altercations, and for good reason. That is the job of trained law enforcement professionals, who can handle such situations most safely.

The job of a school resource officer does not end with the school day. In fact, many regularly act as mentors and establish bonds of trust with students in the schools. These are relationships that last a lifetime and proactively connect police with the community, as members rather than outsiders.

For years, members of the Stamford Police Association have dedicated their own time and resources to support families, community youth, athletic and school enrichment programs. These programs have resulted in countless positive outcomes, with tens of thousands of children and teens, who have graduated and moved on toward greater success in life.

Rather than Connecticut leaders throwing shame and blame on the important job of our school resource officers, let’s give credit where credit is due. Dedicated officers across our state should be recognized, not demonized.

Hate, including for law enforcement officers, should have no place in our state, and certainly not in legislation in the name of so-called “police reforms.”

I urge our leaders in Hartford, do not banish police and school resource officers from Connecticut. The young lives this will ultimately impact many not be able to vote yet, but their future should be our shared priority.

Sgt. Kris Engstrand is president of the Stamford Police Association and vice president of the Police Officers Association of CT (POACT).

So when U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, addressed his colleagues on the floor or the chamber this week and said, of the Democrats, “first they outlaw Dr. Seuss ...” he was being a big lying liar.

McCarthy was actually speaking about HR 1, a major overhaul of federal election law, so bringing up Dr. Seuss was pretty random. It was also — did I mention this? — an untrue falsehood and lying lie.

McCarthy also posted a video of himself reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” which is not one of the six Seuss titles whose status caused the week’s uproar.

Kevin McCarthy is a silly person.

“Green Eggs and Ham” and, indeed, all of the most beloved Seuss titles were not affected by this week’s announcement. Dr. Seuss Enterprises — founded by Theodore Geisel’s widow to manage his literary estate after the author died in 1991 — announced that it would no longer publish six Seuss titles. The rest of his oeuvre — more than 60 books in all — will remain undisturbed.

Two of the titles — “If I Ran the Zoo” and “To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” — are mid-level favorites. The other four, if I hid them in a list amid 16 other fake Seuss titles, you would be unlikely to recognize.

Just so we’re clear, Republicans, the decision came from the people who own the material. Dr. Seuss Enterprises manages the intellectual property for Geisel’s estate. I’ve spoken to many Republicans in my day, and I always got the feeling that they believed people should be able to do what they like with their property.

On the other hand, there does seem to be a newfound uneasiness with Dr. Seuss. President Joe Biden failed to mention him in this year’s “Read Across America” proclamation, which is issued on Geisel’s birthday, the same day his estate announced it wouldn’t publish more copies of those six titles because of their “hurtful and wrong” portrayal of minorities.

Again, just so we’re clear, proclamations are staff work. There’s no way Biden knew that Trump and Obama had mentioned Seuss in the past or that Seuss was notably omitted this time.

This is not the same thing as canceling or banning. It’s not the same thing as calling Geisel a racist. In fact, there are significant parallels between Geisel, born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, and a fella from down the road, Mark Twain, who adopted Hartford as his home city.

Each man was troubled by racial and ethnic injustice and also not completely uncontaminated by it. I’ve always believed that people who are pure of heart tend to deliver a less powerful and compelling message than the messengers who know what’s right but are nagged for life by a pebble of wrong in their shoes.

If I ran the zoo, I’m not sure what I’d do. I abhor the banning of books and the sterilization of culture. You have to teach Twain, with sensitivity, to high schoolers, but maybe there’s some kind of an age cut-off. A ChineseAmerican second-grader shouldn’t see an offensive caricature of himself when he pulls a book off a shelf in the school library.

And we grown-ups have to admit to ourselves that some of what we loved is less innocent than we realized.

Those crows in “Dumbo” were my favorite part of the movie. They were funny and edgy, jiving out on a rail fence, and their song, “When I See an Elephant Fly” is the best song in the film. But they are unmistakably a source of minstrelsy and Black comic relief in a white movie. “But I be done seen about everything ...”

I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t appear in the recent Tim Burton remake. Crows, you gotta go.

As a kid I read and loved Booth Tarkington’s Penrod books, but there are two minor characters, local Black boys named Herman and Verman, who are so steeped in stereotype as to make the Penrod franchise a literary Superfund site.

We laughed when Robin Williams did an Indian accent or when Billy Crystal put on blackface to do an (unquestionably loving) impersonation of Sammy Davis Jr.

But it’s time to put away childish things.

It isn’t easy, fixing culture. If you keep what you love and ditch what you hate, you’ve done nothing. We will survive without any further printings of “McElligot’s Pool” or “On Beyond Zebra!”

We won’t grow by erasing their existence or embracing them in blind nostalgia. Don’t embrace or erase it. Just face it and taste it. Should it keep its place or fall from grace?

I have to stop now. Whether you write on a screen or papyrus, those Seussian rhymes are a cognitive virus.

Two of the titles — “If I Ran the Zoo” and “To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” — are mid-level favorites. The other four, if I hid them in a list amid 16 other fake Seuss titles, you would be unlikely to recognize.