George Floyd’s reprehensible murder put in motion a long overdue reckoning over police violence in communities of color. More can and should be done to rectify eons of systemic abuse. However, not every measure taken thus far has been wise, including removing School Resource Officers who are charged with keeping the peace in and around school buildings.
Last week, a 17-year-old student shot two deans at Denver’s East High School. The student fired multiple rounds as the deans physically patted him down — precisely to discover whether or not he was armed. This raises several questions.
First, why was the student patted down in the first place? Denver Public Schools (DPS) Superintendent Alex Marrero revealed — likely in violation of the minor gunman’s Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) rights — that he was subject to a “safety agreement” that required him to be searched at the beginning of each school day. An investigation by a local ABC News station revealed that the search protocol is part of DPS’ “Discipline Matrix,” which measures student misconduct at different levels of severity. The document begins, “You make a difference in breaking historical patterns of inequity! Disrupt bias, fight disproportionality, and apply the Discipline Matrix in anti-racist and trauma-informed manner.”
