Education Week - October 1, 2014 - 16

Pentagon Program Provides Surplus Weapons to Districts
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the country have stepped up security
measures, adding new equipment,
police officers, and armed guards.
But civil rights and student organizations
have said the role of school
police too often extends beyond securing
buildings and into routine student
discipline matters that should not involve
law enforcement, especially for
minority students and students with
disabilities, who bear a disproportionate
share of such punishments.
Heightened Concerns
Concerns about overly harsh discipline
are intensified by the presence
of intimidating military equipment
in and around schools, which "only
exacerbate existing tensions," civil
rights groups said in a September
letter to U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan, U.S. Attorney General
Eric Holder, and U.S. Secretary of
Defense Chuck Hagel.
"Arming school police with military-grade
weapons and gear creates
the potential to contribute to climates
that students of color already experience
as hostile, and contributes to
the normalization of the criminalization
of these youth, worsening educational
outcomes, and producing no
public safety benefits," says the letter,
signed by the Washington-based
naacp Legal Defense and Education
Fund and 22 other organizations.
The 1033 program, which has distributed
more than $5 billion in property
since it was created in 1997, has
been a target of scrutiny since some
of its equipment was used by police
in what many saw as a heavy-handed
response to protesters in Ferguson,
Mo., following a police shooting of unarmed
teenager Michael Brown there
in August.
Since the protests, in which crowds
were hit with rubber bullets and tear
gas and confronted by officers in armored
vehicles, President Obama has
ordered a review of the program.
A database from the Defense Department
shows that tactical gear
and weapons from the 1033 program
have been provided to school
police departments in at least 22
districts in eight states-California,
Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan,
Nevada, Texas, and Utah.
Surplus equipment provided to
police in districts as large as the
654,000-student Los Angeles school
system includes M-14 and M-16 rifles,
extended magazines, automatic
pistols, armored plating, tactical
vests, swat gear, Mine-Resistant Ambush
Protected, or mrap, vehicles, and
grenade launchers, which are used by
police agencies to deploy tear gas and
smoke in crowd-control situations.
School-based police agencies that
received equipment from the Defense
Department said most of it
would only be used in the event of
a mass shooting. A spokesman for
the Defense Department said some
school agencies may have acquired
equipment they would likely only
use in cooperation with other lawenforcement
agencies outside of the
school environment.
But such statements did little to
A Mine-Resistant Ambush
Protected vehicle, or mrap,
sits in front of police
headquarters in Watertown,
Conn. The Los Angeles school
district police department is
among those that have
acquired such vehicles
through a Pentagon surplus
equipment program.
"
Some members of
our community are
not comfortable
with the district
having this
vehicle."
CINDY MARTEN
Superintendent
San Diego Unified School District
calm criticisms from concerned parents
and newspaper editorial boards
after the equipment made headlines.
In response, the Los Angeles School
Police Department said it would
return three grenade launchers it
received through the 1033 program.
But the department said it would
not return 61 rifles-automatic
weapons that have been modified
to be semiautomatic, which it called
"essential life-saving items"-and
an mrap vehicle it said it would only
use "under extraordinary circumstances,"
with approval from the
police chief and the superintendent.
San Diego Superintendent Cindy
Marten, on the other hand, said the
132,000-student district's police department
would return the mrap it
had intended "for use as a rescue
vehicle in a rescue situation."
"Some members of our community
are not comfortable with the district
having this vehicle," Ms. Marten said
in a statement. "If any part of our
community is not comfortable with
it, we cannot be comfortable with it.
The safety and security of our students
and schools is a top priority and
we need to balance this priority with
what the community's perceptions are
on how we best serve and protect."
A San Diego schools spokesperson
said the district has been instructed
to hold onto the mrap until the Defense
Department can address a
bottleneck of agencies seeking to
return equipment and find a new
location for the vehicle.
U.S. Reps. Hank Johnson, D-Ga.,
and Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, introduced
a bill in September that would
restrict what equipment could be distributed
through the 1033 program.
In their letter, the civil rights organizations
urged federal agencies
to create a comprehensive list of
what military equipment schoolbased
agencies have acquired
through the program and to pro16
| EDUCATION WEEK | October 1, 2014 | www.edweek.org
hibit school-based police from participating
in 1033 in the future.
Defense Department spokesperson
Mark Wright, said the agency
relies on state-based coordinators
to determine if requests for equipment
are appropriate. School-based
police departments are "treated
just like any other agency" in the
1033 program, he said.
"We are not organized and we are
not qualified to pass judgement on
the needs of local law-enforcement
agencies," Mr. Wright said. "If they
say they need an M-16, we take
their word for it."
Federal Guidance
Education Department spokeswoman
Dorie Nolt would not take
a position on whether it was appropriate
for school police to receive
equipment through the 1033
program.
"Secretary [Arne] Duncan believes
that the most effective
means for preventing violence in
schools is the presence of adults
who let all students know they are
cared for, valued, and understood
at school, and students who support
their peers and look out for
each other," Ms. Nolt said in an
email.
In civil rights guidance on school
discipline it issued in January, the
Education Department advised
schools that they are accountable
for ensuring that the police units
they supervise or employ under
agreements with local agencies
treat all students fairly and without
discrimination. Information
from the 2011-12 school year released
in March by the federal
education agency's office for civil
rights shows that, while black students
made up 16 percent of students
enrolled in schools that year,
they represented 27 percent of
those referred to law enforcement
by schools and 31 percent of those
who were subject to school-related
arrests.
The Hoover, Ala.-based National
Association of School Resource Officers
has advised its members that
school police should stay out of routine
discipline. The agency does not
take a position on what equipment
officers should use, military surplus
or otherwise, President Kevin
Quinn said.
And, he added, stopping the flow
of equipment to schools through
the 1033 program may not bring
that significant of a change, especially
in the use of high-powered
rifles like M-14s and M-16s, the
most popular piece of equipment
acquired by school police through
the program. Some school police
have said firearms that are more
powerful than the pistols they typically
carry would be necessary in
the event of an attack by a shooter
carrying a semiautomatic weapon.
A growing number of school officers
have access to semiautomatic
rifles, which are typically locked
in safes or in police vehicles, Mr.
Quinn said. And schools that don't
have access to 1033 equipment
have acquired those weapons on
the private market.
"If that's something that they
feel is necessary, we're not going to
say otherwise," he said.
Coverage of school climate and student
behavior and engagement is supported
in part by grants from the Atlantic
Philanthropies, the NoVo Foundation,
the Raikes Foundation, and the
California Endowment. Education
Week retains sole editorial control over
the content of this coverage.
The RULES FOR ENGAGEMENT blog
tracks news and trends on this issue.
www.edweek.org/go/rulesforengagement
Steven Valenti/The Republican-American/AP-File
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Education Week - October 1, 2014

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