Sewell: Cops in high schools

By John Sewell –

Someone, probably Police Chief Bill Blair, will have to soon make the decision whether police officers should again be put in selected Toronto high schools.

About 20 schools have had officers assigned to them since last September. That decision was taken by the chief, with the assent of the school trustees, after a student was killed in one school.  Julian Falconer had been appointed to tell the school board how to reduce violence in schools, but he did not recommend cops in schools, nor had anyone else in authority apart from the chief.

No clear goals had been established for this experiment, and no criteria established for how success might be measured. Now, as the school year draws to a close, someone must determine whether it should be continued.

The first thing to remember is that this experiment has been expensive. It costs about $100,000 to put a police officer on the street for a year, so this venture has a cost of about $2 million.

The school board is totally strapped for funds—it can’t even afford to keep the swimming pools open—and would love to get its hands on this kind of money. But the money is in the hands of the police, who have no trouble getting the funding they want from city council.

Some data have been collected by the school board and the police about the impact of these officers. They are summarized in a set of charts created by the board on Jan. 30, 2009, but never publicly released. They compare the first semester in 2007 (Sept. to Dec.) with the same period in 2008.

The charts generally conclude that serious incidents at schools decreased from 2007 to 2008, and that there were few differences in what happened at schools with officers and those without.

Student suspensions were down, the numbers of violent incident forms completed were down, the police charges were down. The number of weapons (firearms, knives, and other weapons) discovered at schools were down slightly, from a grand total across the whole school system of 32 to 30.

The only difference shown for schools staffed with full time officers compared to those without, was that the schools with officers had more lockdowns—three in 2007 and six in 2008—whereas the whole school system showed many fewer lockdowns, dropping from 24 to 19 (and the 19 includes the 6 from the schools with officers.)

On the basis of this evidence, one would have to conclude that this experiment didn’t do anything to improve school safety. Maybe it did something else (educated police officers?) but it did not affect school safety.

Data in the annual police statistical report show that crime occurring on school premises has been falling steadily since 1998, just as crime in society has been falling. As well, the data cite a police survey concluding that in 2007 86% of students felt “very or reasonably safe” in or around schools. Other surveys show that figure at 89% and 93%.

It would be interesting to know if students in schools with fulltime officers felt more or less safe than those in other schools.

It doesn’t seem cost effective to use police officers in this way. Is that what the chief will conclude? Will the board ask if it can get that money to use it on other ways that improve educational outcomes?