Guest Opinion | Collective of the Roses: We Demand Pasadena Rejects Funding to Put Police Officers in Pasadena Unified Schools

We the undersigned organizations are demanding the Pasadena Public Safety Committee and the Pasadena City Council reject approving the “5 YEAR AGREEMENT WITH PASADENA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT (PUSD) FOR SCHOOL PREVENTION OFFICER SERVICES.”

We are calling on members of the Committee and City Council to reject any funding being used to put Pasadena Police officers in PUSD schools. We are most concerned with the proposed Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program to put PPD officers inside or around PUSD middle school students and families.

PUSD has not been transparent in providing parents, communities, or even the PUSD School Board with basic information on what the GREAT program would entail, its curriculum, or even evidence-based research on the results of the program. While neighboring school districts like LAUSD are listening to parents and students to reduce school police and invest more in Black and Brown students, PUSD wants to grow police power in our schools.

We specifically are concerned with PPD interrogating, surveilling, collecting data, and criminalizing middle school students of color through GREAT. Research has shown that “the mere presence of police officers in school increases the likelihood that a student will be referred to law enforcement for adolescent behavior.” By choosing to invest in a law enforcement centered program created by the ATF and the Phoenix, AZ Police PUSD is not working to support student success.

Rather than using a “youth of promise” approach which seeks to support students impacted by systemic violence, PUSD executives are proposing a criminalizing and anti-Black “at-risk” approach led by the PPD. Furthermore, GREAT or any involvement of PPD with students contradicts the resolutions that were passed in 2020 by PUSD with their specific commitment “to eradicating any practices and curriculum that have a biased, discriminatory, racist, or suppressive impact on Black, Latina/o/x and Indigenous students and families.”

As community organizations made up of local residents, parents, educators, and violence prevention advocates, we want to see our young people thrive in harm-free communities. That is why we believe in investing in student support that works, including culturally specific counseling, district-wide Restorative Justice initiatives, public health initiatives, neighborhood truces, healing arts, living wage jobs, low-income housing, fully subsidized public recreation, and well-funded public education.

Investing in police is a step in the wrong direction and will have damaging consequences on public school students who already had to suffer five public schools closing in Northwest Pasadena since 2018. Students should be welcomed back in Fall 2021 with care and educational professionals to recover from the trauma of COVID19, not law enforcement.

Signed,

Collective of the Roses,

NAACP Pasadena, NDLON, Indivisible Alta-Pasadena, POP!