NOW Toronto
Thursday October 5, 2017
by Chris Rattan
Rexdale consultation into School Resource Officer Program hears of increases in arrests of students and newcomers being turned over to immigration officials
Youth mentor Abdi Warsame says the presence of cops in schools is traumatizing for Somali students. PHOTO: Chris Rattan
At the Dar-ul Hijra Islamic Centre in Rexdale on September 27, the
fourth of six public consultations into the future of the Toronto
District School Board’s (TDSB) cops in schools program (or School Resource Officer Program, as it’s officially known) is about to start.
But there are no young people in attendance. The meeting is made up
mostly of a couple dozen community members, primarily from the
neighbourhood’s large Somali community.
One attendee says he tried to corral a few students to come but they
expressed fear that they could be reprimanded for their statements,
particularly if plainclothes officers were surveilling the meeting.
The concern may come off as paranoid to anyone from a neighbourhood
that hasn’t been over-policed or been a hub for refugees from the Somali
civil war, which inflicted its own persistent traumas. Rexdale is
both.
The absence of a sense of security between the community and police
came to a head when police were brought into area schools, despite
concerns raised by parents and activists of the criminalizing effect
armed and uniformed officers would have on marginalized students.
Started in 2008, the SRO program currently has 37 police officers in
66 secondary schools across the city. The intent was to improve school
safety in the wake of the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Jordan Manners inside his North York school in 2007.
The TDSB consultations, which began September 20 at North York’s
Jamaican Canadian Association and ended October 2 at the Regent Park
Community Centre, will compile the community’s input into a research
report to present to trustees in mid-November. The report will form the
basis of whether the board, which has suspended the program while it
conducts its review, decides to permanently close it down.
The Toronto Police Services Board,
which spearheaded the SRO program, has ordered its own study by
researchers at Ryerson University, with an interim report expected in
January.
Jim Spyropoulos, TDSB executive superintendent on engagement and
well-being, who is facilitating the TDSB consultations, believes reviews
like Ryerson’s miss the mark.
He says universities may crunch numbers and find that the majority of
students react positively to the SRO, like in a recent Carleton
University review of Peel Regional Police’s program. But what about the
students who don’t?
Spyropoulos doesn’t mince words. “SRO has been a complete disaster,” he says.
According to Spyropoulos, there has been an increase in arrests at
schools “and students saying they’ve been under surveillance.” He says
newcomers have also been scrutinized, with “police making calls to immigration and students being deported.”
“We’ve also heard that the SRO is fantastic,” he acknowledges. “But even in those situations, there’s a problem.
“There are young people who have an amazing relationship with the
officer in school. But the minute they walk outside their school walls
and have an interaction with police, they can make the dangerous
assumption that they’ll find a trusting relationship again, and we know
for children from racialized communities, that’s a problem.”
The consultations have focused on creating an environment where
participants could feel safe providing open and unbiased input.
Participants can choose to fill out a survey, make comments on the open
floor or privately during one-on-one sessions. Separate student-only
consultations have also been scheduled by the TDSB.
Abdi Warsame, a youth mentor and father of five who fled from Somalia
for what he called “the pursuit of happiness” in Canada, shared several
stories of humiliation at the hands of police at last Wednesday’s
meeting.
He says he’s experienced repeated traffic stops for DWB – Driving
While Black – a term to describe police’s tendency to racially profile
Black motorists. Warsame uses similar language to describe the SRO’s
targeting of marginalized students. He calls it ASWB – Attending School
While Black.
“There’s no police presence in Bridle Path or Forest Hill schools. In
parts of Forest Hill, [the police] are considered the good guys, and
they consider every resident in that area to be a decent Canadian,” says
Warsame. “The system paints racialized communities as [people of] low
income who pose a violent threat.
“I’m not anti-police,” he says. “The issue is a system that places
these cops into this atmosphere but doesn’t train them to deal with
people in these communities.”
Warsame explains that the presence of officers in schools
re-traumatizes students from backgrounds like his. Like others who
publicly spoke during the meeting, Warsame is advocating that trustees
vote for the program’s removal come November.
“In Somalia, I had negative experiences with the police acting as if I
was committing crimes left and right. Older people also had bad
experiences with the state police and their brutality,” he says. “Most
Somalis won’t share the trauma
they’ve gone through. So you survive it and come to Canada. But the
last thing you expect is to again be negatively impacted by the police.”
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