Senate Bill 192 School Safety. Sen. Lubbers. Rep. Porter.
This is a bill that passed the Senate in an innocuous form:
Requires school corporations to abate certain school building safety violations that are not immediate safety hazards before the earlier of: (1) one year after the state fire marshal’s determination; or (2) the start of the school corporation’s next budget year. Requires at least one: (1) tornado preparedness drill; and (2) manmade occurrence disaster drill; during each semester of school.
But, over in the House, it picked up a provision about which I have serious reservations: school corporation police departments. In the latest printing, a school corporation may establish a school corporation police department.
A school corporation police officer has general police powers, including the power to arrest, without process, all persons who within the view of the school corporation police officer commit any offense. School corporation police officers have the same common law and statutory powers, privileges, and immunities as sheriffs and constables.
At this point, I don’t have any well articulated reasons for my opposition. I just have a general feeling that we are over-regimenting our schools. Kids conditioned from a very early age to metal detectors and a prominent police presence probably won’t grow into the sorts of citizens envisioned by our Founding Fathers as they fought for liberty and railed against tyranny. Furthermore, I guess I’m not sure I like the idea of entrusting a police force to our local school boards. However, the provision passed the House Education committee unanimously, so maybe my concerns are not well founded.
[tags]SB192-2007, law enforcement[/tags]
From the perspective of seperation of powers, why wouldn’t you just fund more city or county police officers & station them at a school?
I agree that the idea of giving school boards their own police is a really, really bad idea. You know how heated some school board meetings can get… and now a school board member can order someone they disagree with arrested? Nightmare waiting to happen.
I don’t have a strong opinion on this either way. I suppose the thought is that as long as schools are going to employ security guards, they may as well have the power and immunity of a regular police officer. I share your unease with the metal detector/security guard regime, but I don’t know that we will ever reverse that. My guess is that a problem with Joe’s solution is that if a town police officer or county sheriff’s deputy were assigned to the school, that officer would be under the direction of the sheriff/chief of police rather than under the direction of the principal or the superintendent.
There are good and bad school boards around the state, but I can’t say that the idea of a school board with a police force is any more troubling that the idea that some of the folks involved in muncipal government around that state have such power. Just follow the Roseland saga (Roseland is a small, barely-a-town in St. Joe County right around the Notre Dame exit from the toll road). Google “Roseland Snyder” and I’m sure you will find some interesting things.