End Police Surveillance and Violence in Our Schools and Neighborhoods:

NO Metal Detectors and Police Terror

By Linda Green, Sarah Harper, Karyn Pomerantz, 8-17-2023

This article reports on struggles against metal detectors in the schools and against police brutality in the streets of Prince George’s County, MD and Brooklyn, NYC. The campaign in Maryland follows decades of anti-police violence work while the fight against metal detectors is beginning. The editors ask our Maryland readers to join and strengthen this effort.

To engage more people, anti-policing organizations will table at the local Greenbelt Labor Day Festival on September 2^nd from 10am to 2pm. You can email the blog’s co-editor to volunteer. pomerantzkaryn6@gmail.com

No Metal Detectors in Our Schools

There is a new sheriff in Prince George’s County, MD in the person of the most recent school superintendent: Millard House III. He is starting his tenure calling for clear backpacks and metal detectors in high schools and some middle schools. As if having cops in the schools wasn’t enough, he now wants to make students feel even more like school is a jail and a stop on the school to prison pipeline.

An article in a neighborhood newspaper alerted residents of Hyattsville, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC, to an upcoming community meeting at Hyattsville Middle School on August 12. Neighbors from the Progressive Labor Party immediately planned to attend it to challenge this policy. They took copies of the news article, made signs, and reached out to the PTA. Several parents gave their names and were upset to learn about this new policy.

Surveillance vs Services

At the meeting, parents testified that:

• The Superintendent of Education aims to beef up the cops in the schools by 11 officers County wide.
  
  
• The Opengate detectors will cost over $6 million; $2 million of PGC taxpayer money and $4 million in grants will fund them.
  
  
• There is a shortage of teachers and bus drivers. Many parents drop their children off and pick them up after school because of the bus driver shortage. At the Greenbelt French Immersion School, the line can be up to a 30-minute wait!
  
• There are no sports in the middle schools. The area Boys and Girls Clubs are supposed to fill the gap, but many families cannot afford the fees.

The news article published these points:

• Five incidents with guns did not involve backpacks.

• Detectors don’t catch small weapons like knives.

• Most shootings occur outside; no shootings in PG were inside.

• There were no shootings in Hyattsville middle schools from 20177-2022.

• Only 0.1% of the incidents responded to by School Resource Officers (SROs) involved firearms.

• A meta-analysis (study of many studies) did not prove that detectors had any effect on safety.

• Florida parents forced the schools in their area to stop the backpack policy on the grounds of privacy, safety, and cost.

One Hyattsville parent described the policies as a “show of security theatre.”  Another blamed school violence on the schools’ “culture and climate” that doesn’t support student mental health.” Instead, PG County is cutting 42% in mental health services with no increase in personnel while the budget for SROs will increase by 7.4%.

Brooklyn parents and PLP members have been fighting these policies there for years, refusing to rely on politicians or voting. One woman from Hyattsville had been a student in Brooklyn when metal detectors were installed in the school, and she was angry that this is still happening. She knew firsthand how it felt to be a student treated like a criminal.

In the Wake of Antiracist Anger

In 2020, Brooklyn parents demanded that the city remove metal detectors. This multiracial group has a long history of fighting the many racist attacks hurled at students, demanding the removal of scanners; more and integrated sports teams; defending students arrested inside the school (for wearing a safety pin to secure eyeglasses together); and protesting the disrepair of the school.  

PTA members in NYC were touched by the explosion of anger coming out of the racist murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020. Time and again parents joined demonstrations, rejected the participation of misleader politicians, and learned about communist ideas (See below Pupils-or-perpetrators-how-safety-officers-treat-students-in-US-and-NYC-schools).

Police Brutality Continues

Police brutality in PG County continues to plague predominantly black and immigrant residents. The cops maintain fear by threatening to arrest and kill young students. PLP and its friends in the County’s police accountability groups have fought this for over 30 years. They have demanded indictments of the “dirty dozen” most violent police officers, testified at hearings, and called to open the case of Archie Elliott who was murdered by the police while sitting handcuffed in a police car. They have waged struggles to keep cops (Student Resource Officers) out of the schools where they disproportionately target black, immigrant, and disabled students. Instead, anti-racist activists have called for more guidance counselors, psychologists, librarians, and other support staff.

Currently, police accountability groups are also struggling for justice for William Green who was murdered by the police in January 2020. Even though the officer was arrested and jailed, the Court has not sentenced him. His family and friends are organizing to attend the officer’s sentencing this fall. They will challenge County politicians to make the new police accountability board responsive and transparent. Contact us to learn more and attend the sentencing.

Police Accountability Boards

Workers often respond to police violence and surveillance by demanding grassroots residents to serve on police accountability boards to investigate and punish offenders. However, these boards have major flaws and have not slowed the rate of police violence. They do not have any investigatory powers. They cannot call witnesses or subpoena them. They are only to rubber stamp the police reports. None of the Boards in Maryland have any teeth.

Howard University researchers studied these boards and concluded that:

The fundamental purpose of the police is “to safeguard the property interests of the capitalist class, including the supply of a compliant, productive workforce.

… oppressive policing is a structural requirement in a capitalist society, which makes … greater accountability— especially challenging. “

… the boards are primarily concerned with the resolution of individual misconduct complaints.

… police unions have successfully forestalled efforts to increase transparency and public accountability (See below Green, Rodney D.).

Workers and students can organize antiracist and antisexist actions in multiracial and intergenerational groups, build confidence within our own class to eventually eliminate racist attacks on students, parents, teachers, and antiracist curriculum. In the long run, however, workers must take control and replace the current class of rulers.

See also:

1. Pupils-or-perpetrators-how-safety-officers-treat-students-in-US-and-NYC-schools

Pupils or Perpetrators? How “Safety Officers” Treat Students in US and NYC Schools

• Protect-our-students-promoting-school-safety-racist-cops-out-of-the-schools/

Protect Our Students – Promoting School Safety: RACIST COPS OUT OF THE SCHOOLS!

• Green, Rodney D., and Jillian Aldebron. “In Search of Police Accountability: Civilian Review Boards and Department of Justice Intervention.” Phylon (1960-), vol. 56, no. 1, 2019, pp. 111–33. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26743833. Accessed 20 Aug. 2023.

The Blog has many other stories about policing.

---