By Steve Pomper
The school board for the school district I live in, which contains the schools my children attended, and grandchildren now attend, recently voted to eliminate school resource officers. Lucid people immediately recoil at such raw stupidity while political radicals convulse with delight over their “wokeness.”
According to Q13 FOX, school district officials defended their decision by citing, “the reason for the change is to make students feel safe.” Feel safe? What about actually being safe? School district spokesperson Harmony Weinberg said, “It did come down to them (the school board), each of them, individually, hearing from students who felt either hurt, traumatized, or have some sort of negative impact from having police presence on campus.”
There was no mention of “the school board, each of them, individually, hearing from students who” supported police officers in their schools. I’m not sure there’s a device sensitive enough to measure the board’s apparent apathy toward those (obviously racist if they support cops) students.
What a load of garbage. Except for rare circumstances, kids who feel traumatized, hurt, or negatively impacted by the mere presence of police officers on campus need counseling. And parents and teachers need to reflect on why those kids are feeling this way.
It is not normal for a child to believe police officers are out to hurt them. And there is no evidence in any valid statistics that this is true. Yet, some parents and teachers continue to press upon these kids the myth about wanton police abuse. In other words, adults with political agendas must teach kids to believe lies about the police.
These school officials’ views are not based in reality. Can they truly be so “woke,” they will risk their students’ safety to demonstrate to the radical mob just how “woke” they are? Before and after the vote, I’d emailed every board member about my concerns. I only received one reply. It was an auto-response notification that the member was retiring in three days.
Apparently, my point of view did not matter to them. I mean, what do I know? I’m only a retired police officer, with grandkids attending classes in the school district, who knows the value of cops in schools.
But, aside from the critical safety aspects, there’s another facet skittering around the main issue, trying to remain hidden. It came to me during an interview with Nicolette Emmino and Bryan DeLuca at Insomnicat Media (NPA will post a link when it is available). Being solutions-oriented, during the discussion about the challenges with police-public relations, they asked me what I thought were suitable ways to bridge the gap.
I told them people should meet with cops in more informal settings more often. Meeting officers is an excellent way for students to learn about cops as people. They learn that police have families, have likes and dislikes, and have good and bad days, just like them.
Then it clicked: the radical decision to toss police officers out of the schools does the exact opposite of students getting to know the cops. In fact, it works in reverse. It increases the odds students won’t meet officers in a safe, informal setting. It adds to the false fear students are being taught and not to the understanding school officials should be encouraging.
It occurred to me these radical school board members don’t want police officers to meet the children, and they sure don’t want the kids getting to know the officers. Under the ludicrous, and insulting, premise that police officers are dangerous to minority students, they have eliminated one of the (if not the) best tools for bridging the public-police gap. But why?
Why would school board members do such an irresponsible thing that accomplishes the opposite of what they’ve said they’ve wanted for years? Better relations between the youth, specifically minorities, and the police. Most honest people, on a one-on-one basis, will tell you they don’t believe cops are a threat to students in the schools.
But dishonest school board members with political agendas, having marinated in their newly found woke juices, are now the willing coconspirators of Marxist radicals who are exploiting a racial division they helped to create and then exacerbated, so they can tear down and replace traditional American culture. Put the political ideological noise out of your mind for a moment and ask yourself, why don’t they want students to get to know police officers?
The answer is simple. Because they don’t want the kids to learn the truth: that the cops are actually nice people who are at the school specifically to protect and not hurt them. This is especially true of cops who serve as school resource officers. Most of these officers have volunteered for the positions, specifically so they can protect kids and so the kids can get to know the cops.
The false premise that school districts are voting to get rid of school resource officers because minority students are afraid the cops will hurt them is insulting, insane, and it folds reality inside out. But we’re not supposed to say that, right. You’re obviously racist to support the police, which shows if you do, it’s equally obvious you support cops killing black people. At least, that’s the narrative full of holes they’re trying to float.
Come on, folks! If you don’t believe this nonsense about the police, say so. You’re the ones who are being reasonable. They are not, and, though they take offense at the least perceived slight, they’re sure not afraid of offending you.
Their unreasonable, ideologically based, often violent, actions also solidify the evidence supporting those who argue the schools are vessels of political indoctrination and not sanctuaries for teaching and learning objective facts.
If you don’t believe the vast majority of school resource police officers are in schools to help and not hurt students, you are either a moron or a deluded ideologue. No, really. Those are your only two options. Oh, wait…, you could be both.