School Police: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) 

Funny how there’s always money to harden security at school but never enough when it comes to funding actual teaching and growth

When I was in high school our SRO tricked a kid into bumming him a cigarette, kid got charged and suspended. At the time it seemed funny that the kid was so dumb but looking back now its insane that there was a cop in our schools tricking kids, not even dangerous or violent kids, into incriminating themselves. The thought that the SRO was intended to be there to protect the children and was instead giving them criminal records is sickening.

“Kids deserve to be annoying without being arrested” might be the most truthful, REAL and IMPORTANT sentence said out loud on any medium outlet EVER!!

John saying "Oh no my good Bitch" is the greatest thing I've ever heard

American gun nuts be like: "I'm against government oversight and tyranny, which is why I want an armed government officer in every school in the country."

Republicans: “It’s not a gun problem, it’s a mental health problem” Us: “Okay, can we at least have more money for mental health programs and intervention?” Republicans: “No, that’s socialism”

My son was traumatized by an SRO in high school and NEVER went back. My son went to his counselor because he was depressed and the SRO IMMEDIATELY 51/50'd him even though.he said he wasn't thinking of harming himself. Our local hospital was full, so they took him to one an hour away without my knowledge. I didn't know anything was wrong until he called me from the hospital. Since it was a mandatory 72 HR hold, the hospital had a psychiatrist come from an hour away to evaluate him because the staff didn't think he needed to be there, but a psychiatrist had to sign off on it. Since it was a Friday, my son would have had to spend 3 days in an ER for no reason if the hospital hadn't been so kind to get someone to release him early. One bad call from an SRO scared my teen from trying to seek help and he stayed home schooled the rest of the year. We got him the help he needed for his depression, including seeing a psychiatrist. He is good now, but he still has panic attacks around authority figures and he is now 20.

My school officer was arrested a few years after I graduated for pedophilia so... That was great

I was suspended from school for calling our SRO a "dirty pig" after he came into the girl's bathroom while we were changing for gym class unannounced. Two stalls had no doors and an entire class was in there getting changed. But I was the one who deserved to be detained and suspended. Makes sense.

Officers aren't there to make anything safer. They're there so if something terrible happens, the school district is not blamed. It's not the students' line of defense, it's the district's.

I graduated in 2016, and my high school had ‘campus police’. They would generally stand at corners not looking at any of us, just muttering into walkie-talkies, and I couldn’t tell you a single one of their names- but I’ll never forget when one of the ‘problem kids’ got upset about getting a detention, and the teacher called the campus police, who arrested her in the middle of class. She clearly had something going on but nobody ever seemed concerned about why a student might constantly be yelling and starting fights. And for the record, I had classes with three white ‘problem kids’, and never saw the teachers call campus police on any of them.

I am autistic and was arrested in 6th grade by an sro. It destroyed my whole families life not just mine, my parents divorced and moved over halfway across the country so I didn't go to jail for not standing in line for a substitute, ruined my intellectual development lost all my special classes and my scholarship to college I had won as a part of a mensa contest I ended up dropping out. Schools don't need cops kids don't need cops.

That woman wasn't stalling for time, she was deciding if telling the truth was worth destroying her career.

As someone from Europe it’s absolutely baffling to me that in the US there are a) so many school shootings to the point that b) you have police officers at school. It’s like watching a story from a parallel universe where ducks are horses and horses are ducks.

You know that uneasy feeling you get around cops, like when one follows you for a few blocks while driving, or really whenever someone in a flak jacket carrying a gun is out in public, that’s great for creating a learning environment

“I just thought someone would look at it and think ‘this is so cool- a legand was here’” just broke me.

As a foreigner, having armed officers in campus and students acknowledging them so casually is extremely disturbing

At my high school our SRO would stand in front of the stairs to confiscate food people were carrying and throw it away in the morning because people weren't supposed to have food outside of the cafeteria. I grew up poor, so I qualified for free breakfast and lunch - without it I couldn't eat on any given school day. But I also lived rurally and my bus was often late, arriving literally right before the bell rang. I would run and grab food and an orange juice from the cafeteria and try to book it to bio, eating on the way, and she started standing at the staircase I had to take to get there. Every. Morning. Because preventing a potential mess for the janitors was more important than children being fed. I learned quickly though. I started only choosing bagels in the morning, which came with a sealed container of cream cheese, so I could stuff them in my backpack before I turned the corner to the stairs. She would try to stop me, I'd hold up my empty hands to show her I had no food then race up the stairs and eat in class. I'm really thankful Mr. Fabian, my bio teacher, didn't care that I ate in class, because that would have been a long semester of going hungry. I graduated 11 years ago and I still think about it all the time.

I was mercilessly bullied in school-particularly in Middle School in the hallway & my Art Class. This occurred EVERY day; I finally made the bad judgment mistake by bringing a jackknife to Art class, one of the bullies went into my bag, found the knife, ANNOUNCED what I’d done-and my “weapon” was confiscated. Shortly thereafter, the Assistant Principal summoned me to his office. I wasn’t disciplined, someone on faculty knew my intention was to try & protect myself and he just wanted to talk to me. He did-and did so very gently. He let me know that HE knew sth was going on, he was watching-and that I should come to him instead. The bullying lessened (didn’t stop) but I was grateful for his efforts

Having police officers in schools on a regular basis is just another thing that seems batshit insane to lot of people outside America. I mean... Cops patrolling in schools harassing disabled and POC kids, this is some high level dystopian stuff here.

When I was in high school, I almost got arrested because I tossed an eraser to my friend who didn't hear me say "Hey catch" and he got hit in the eye. He wasn't mad, it was complete accident, and we laughed it off. Our teacher than held me after class (which at this point I already forgot the eraser thing even happened it was so meaningless), tried to file a report on me, and our SRO had to come in and talk to me. Thankfully, my SRO was not an abusive asshole, and really my teacher's more a POS than the cop herself, but she literally just read the incident report and was like, "This is bullshit, I'm not handcuffing the fucking kid." I appreciate her for that, but the fact that was even a possibility at all is dystopian!

When I was in HS a kid we knew was thrown down, handcuffed and taken to school office while everyone looked on (it was during lunch). We later found out he was acting “weird” bc he was diabetic and was low in sugar. Pretty aggressive tactic for a child who just needed medical attention

Scrubbing, sanding and revarnishing desks was classic detention work in my old school (UK). One ink pen picture of a pretty girl was so good, it was just varnished over to immortalise it!

The SRO in a New Hampshire school where I worked refused to wear a mask, and encouraged students not to wear masks when masks were mandated both by the governor and the school department. It took the school months to get him out of there

"Future tax payers" wow, that's the most honest answer a Republican has ever said.

My son was handcuffed and shoved into a cop car for running through the sprinklers. I had to go down there and go full Karen on them for having the sprinklers on during school in the first place. He. Was. NINE

School police man tried to drag me into a loud auditorium while I was having an autistic meltdown because I had an ear infection and it was very loud in there. I was screaming absolute bloody murder because there’s a man trying to drag me Also when I was sexually assaulted by another student he came to my house and harassed me about it. And invited himself into the house because the front door was unlocked.

At my college we have a small army of officers although our campus isn't big. Last year in a public area I witnessed racially motivated harassment from a small group of students to a single student. Me and a few other students had to step in to stop things from escalating, despite there being 2-3 officers nearby clearly within hearing/seeing range. The police only came over to us after me and the others got involved, seemingly upset that we somehow made the situation worse. Luckily no one was arrested, but it was scary and sad.

I remember being in High School and the 3 SRO’s ALWAYS doing searches with the dogs. They always ALWAYS picked on this kid from a bad home who just didn’t have direction in life. Instead of seeing him as someone who needed another perspective on life they saw him as a criminal in the making. We need to change. We need reform in this country. This is unacceptable.

Wait.. you guys get a CRIMINAL RECORD, for just being arrested even if case dismissed? Just for being arrested? That's fucked up. That means presumed guilty from the start.

Yeah, I’m a mentally disabled student, and can confirm that this shit actually happens. (I have ASD, BPD, PDD, ADHD, CPTSD, and GAD) I’d have daily panic attacks in school, went nonverbal, had shutdowns and meltdowns, and the SROs made everything worse. I was terrified of them hurting me for some bs reason, and cause I was mentally disabled, they’d follow me around. One time I was being bullied on Halloween and they took away my cardboard mask/axe and LOCKED DOWN the hallway, trapping me in the stairwell while I was desperately trying to not go into an episode, because I was scared of what they would do to me if I openly showed any “negative” emotions. It’s why I had to leave the school, I fucking hate it all.

When I was in elementary school, one of the kids in my class got dragged out of the classroom by an SRO because she wasn’t listening to the teacher. Mind you, this girl obviously had stuff going on at home, was 9 years old, and had *adhd* . What made it worse was she was one of the only four of us black kids in the *entire* school. Instead of my teacher getting her help (also quick note, we had no counselors) or at least putting her foot down as the adult or even just explain to the girl why she should at least consider listening, our teacher instead called the SRO. When the girl refused to go with him, he called another officer and they both dragged her out of the classroom as she screamed and cried. Considering the fact that I had to deal with a lot of racism from that school, watching her get dragged away like that by the SROs scared the shit out of me not only because it was horrible, but also because I though I was next if I ever so much as told my teacher “no”.

My autistic son was charged with a felony when he said his mother was going to kill him over a poor grade so he ought to just get it over with and kill himself now. He was charged with terroristic threats of killing himself. He was actually convicted too. This was in Kansas 10 years ago. He was never Able to attend college because of the felony and it has severely affected his life in so many ways. This isn’t even a rare thing. Cops gave absolutely no business being in schools.

Ultimately, America is too obsessed with the idea of “Law Enforcement” rather then “Public Safety”

Stories make me think about how lucky I was in school. When I was young, I had bad anger issues; I yelled at people, ran out of the classroom, even threw punches sometimes. I'm not excusing my behavior, but I was just a kid who needed help, and thankfully I got it. People who didn't know me in elementary school are shocked when I say I had anger issues. But imagine if an SRO came to handle the situation every time I lost my temper instead of a trusted counselor. Would I, an 8 year old, had been arrested instead of getting the help I needed?

In my high school biology class a friend carved “Ryan Cole is a delinquent” onto a desk, and for years I had people behind me in school, friends of my younger sisters, and for all I know kids today thinking I was, in fact a delinquent. That is how legends are created. I was actually a good kid.

America: "It's not everyday you hear of the campus police officer taking on a role in the school play". Rest of the world: It's not everyday you hear the phrase "campus police officer", what is going on over there guys?

I worked at a middle school that had metal detectors, two SRO’s, and 7 security guards. It felt dystopian. More like a cold prison than a school.

When I was a teen in 2006, I and a hundred other kids were on campus “after hours” for band camp. We were playing on the unused football field, running in sprinklers and throwing a deflated football. Our band teacher said we could be there. Within 20 minutes, 3 police cars raced up and skidded to a stop, lights ablaze. A lot of kids freaked out and ran, and it caused a stampede of panic. Several kids tore flesh trying to jump a fence; one kid dislocated an ankle. Even though our teacher had cleared it, this was our school, we were at an official event, and we were not doing any vandalism or dangerous activity- we could’ve been arrested for “evading the police”. If my school had been any less white, kids could’ve been shot for that. This was in 2006. This has been going on for a while.

The absolute state of schools in the US is absolutely tragic

"Oh no my good bitch, that very much is your business." is my new favorite John Oliver line.

Can you imagine anything more pathetic than a grown man who, for a career, goes back to school to bully children?

Under nearly every John Oliver show I could write how glad I am living in the EU and not the backward USA

i had so much contact with police in school just for being autistic in a way my teachers found annoying because like that teacher said most of the staff would default to calling the police instead of dealing with it in literally any other way. i'd get threatened with arrest for things like stimming or going into autistic shutdown, the former i had very little control over and the latter i had no control over at all. thankfully they never made good on these threats but it's like they thought they could intimidate or bully me into being "normal". i never had an officer not be awful to me about it either; none of them ever went "wow there's clearly something going on with this kid. i should try a gentler approach." it's a career that attracts bullies and they're going to bully children just as much as they bully adults and the more vulnerable that child is the worse they're going to be.

I’m blind, and when I was in middle school, the campus officers stopped me all the time because they thought my cane with some sort of weapon. For those who don’t know, one of the techniques for using a cane, is to move the tip back and forth across the ground in an arc about shoulder width. One of the officers actually got me in trouble and accused me of waving it around like a weapon and purposely trying to hit students. And this was about 12 years ago, I can’t imagine how bad it’s gotten today.

In fairness to Laura Garnette, after hearing that question she was thinking, “If I answer this honestly am I going to get fired?“ It can take you a few seconds to decide what you’re going to do. It is to her credit that, after weighing the possibilities, she gave an honest answer.

In Latvia we can't even buy fireworks without a hunter's licence. You'd be surprised that there's no shooting's here😅

The highschool I went to had two SRO's, who's names I frankly dont remember because I never interacted with them, but it also had a couple of security guards, on of whom was named Goardy. And I'll say this, everybody loved Goardy. The other security guards were fine and we all liked them fine enough as well, but Goardy was truly something special. And not a single kid I remember has good memories of the SRO's. Everyones memories of the SRO's was them walking around with guns on their hips, poking their noses into innocent conversations, and just gernally being intimidating and frightening. Goardy on the other hand was actually trained for his job, and did all the things SRO's are supposed to do, but with none of the intimidation factor that is funadmentally inherent to what the police are as an institution. If you were having a bad day, you could talk to Goardy. If another kid was bullying you, you could talk to Goardy. Hell, me and a couple of my friends once got caught smoking weed out back of the school by Goardy, but he didnt know who had what on them, and when we all individually were brought to the principle and didnt snitch on our friends (even though it was already so apparent what had happened) Goardy looked me in the eye and said, and I swear I am not lying about this, "Listen man, we all know what happened. But I respect you for standing up for your friends to the bitter end." I still think about that regularly, the school security guard looked me in the eye and said 'hey you did something wrong and its my job to punish you for that, but I respect you for not backing down and standing up for your friends.' Goardy was a truly good man who truly did his job with nothing but respect and honor, and clearly took great pride in being a part of the educational process, teaching us kids what is and is not acceptable, but also in his own weird way teaching us that a little mischief from time to time is OK, so long as you arent causing any real harm. Anyhow, my highschool was never great, there was a lot of drugs in my town and a lot of kids in that school came from rough families and rough areas, but they have since shut down the whole program they had for the security guards they had there where they trained them really well to be resources for the kids as much as the people you called in if a big brawl happened in the halls. Which did happen a couple of times while I was there. But they shut down whatever program it was that they had for Goardy and his two colleagues to be there in favor of bringing in two more SRO's, about a year after I graduated. And from what I understand of the culture of that school now, while it was never great, its a lot worse now. Now they have drug sniffing dogs in the school, and kids are more scared of being in school, because they are afraid that by getting into trouble its not going to be Goardy coming along to take them to the principles office and maybe tell them what they did was dumb, instead its going to be and SRO who comes along and puts them in the back of a squad car.

The most bizarre aspect of this whole thing is the fact that an arrest that didn't lead to conviction shows up on your record and can harm you in the future. So much for innocent until proven guilty...

When I was in HS, a substitute teacher thought my friends and I were eating pot brownies and called the school SROs on us. About 7 of them, all with guns, came and pulled us out of the classroom. My friend, who sold regular chocolate brownies, had his back pack searched. Then, they humiliated him by saying he wasn’t going to make enough money for college by selling brownies and he was going to end up “flipping burgers.” The worst part is we were in a class that was solely for advanced minority students whose parents were poor. I was so shaken by this incident and it took years for me to come to terms with the fact that it was WRONG and that my friends and I had been racially profiled.

I live in Germany and school shootings happen very, VERY rarely. The one that did happen during my schooltime (not at my school) was something very tragic and outstanding. It is not a daily threat. That a country can have hundreds of shootings each year, numbers increasing, and not do the one sane thing to stop it, is wild to me

More cops is not the answer

Yes, more cops in schools. That way when it happens again, instead of having 20 of them hiding from the gunman, there can be 40.

I've physically blocked my school's SRO from getting into a classroom where one of my students (a young black girl) was having a meltdown that absolutely did not require the intervention of a middle-aged white man with a gun. They don't help.

When I was in highschool my school was one of the highest crime rates in the area and not one fight was broken up by the SRO. He for some reason was always conveniently somewhere else. But if you had a vape he would sniff that shit out and arrest you

At my high school we had a full time police officer. I also had 2 classes where there were not enough desks, so if everyone showed up someone had to sit on the floor. I’m not exaggerating. I had to sit on the floor because there weren’t enough desks. For reference - I graduated in 2018.

“Oh no my good bitch, that is very much your business” is a powerful sentence

Here's an idea: ALL public officials should be obligated to enroll their children in public schools. Yep! Senators, representatives, governors, commissioners, you name it; local, state, and federal. If it's good enough for their constituents, it should be good enough for them. I wonder how many of their children injured or killed it would take to see new legislation. Proverbial food for thought.

The whole idea of schools having armed guards and metal detectors is absolutely insane to me. It's like something from Orwell.

When I first joined my secondary school I'd just been moved in, the teachers didn't bother to get me my own login account for the computers and the teachers just wandered around past me for 25 minutes while I had my hand up, so the person next to me logged me into their account just so I could do something, and suddenly the teachers paid attention, and we got a personal 10 minute lecture on how we were committing fraud and it could easily result in jail time as we had been caught committing a crime on the cameras. She told us about how many years in prison we could be sentenced to... like... come on, cut us some god damn slack. I was like 12.

I was arrested for sleeping in class, and the teacher who told the cops to come get me was crying like she was so sad that it was so sad because an injustice was being done to me, but SHE is the reason it happened! Oh yeah, so they said I was "disturbing the class" by sleeping, because the teacher DISTURBED the class to wake me up.

When "Don't take away my guns" carries more weight than "Don't take away my children", we know we have a serious problem of conscience in the country.

I feel so bad for that 5 year old with adhd that got arested.. Having adhd myself i cant imagine how traumatising that mustve been for the kid Absolutely insane that stuff like this even happens how the fk can you arrest a 5 year old for anything???

As a canadian, I still remember how shocked I was the first time I went to a bank in the US and saw an armed cop or security guard just standing there. I have never seen any security guard at any local branch of a bank in Canada. Ever. And I never had a shooting drill in school either. They gave us little plastic things to tape to the door windows in case of a shooting... and these ended up in the trash after a week cause no one needs them. However, when we had the Dawson College shooting, cops that were nearby and probably had never unholstered their guns outside of training, ran inside and dealt with the shooter right away unlike in Uvalde. American cops are trash.

When I was in middle school, my student resource officer sat my 6th grade class down, looked us dead in the eye, and said they would SHOOT us if we pulled a water gun on them as a prank. So much trust building. So much.

“Oh no, my good bitch” is about to become my new favorite way of correcting someone. Again Oliver nails the heart of the problem.

a close friend of mine got bodied and held down by their school police because they tried to not be restrained while having a manic episode. school police are not a solution they are a problem and at times a danger.

When I was going to school in the 90s we only ever saw police officers at school for the DARE program.

My son is autistic and has ADHD. One day at his new school he was told by the after school program organizer to go home cuz he wouldn't stop running around the gym. They kicked him out. Just kicked him out of the school and no one called me. He had a panic attack and accidentally scraped the paint on a teacher's car. He was arrested. The cops called me, told me what he'd done and that he was at the police station. He is an extremely curious and friendly kid, so he was having fun talking to the police about different things, they were so great at the police station. He didn't understand what he did wrong, or why the cops took him from school, and thankfully the school police officer had an autistic daughter and helped him. They didn't book him, and the teacher refused to press charges. However, because it was on school property, the school district charged him with destruction of property and something else regarding violence. We ended up in court for THREE YEARS trying to fight the charge and get him the help he needed to put him in a school he would actually thrive in. Thankfully he was given a scholarship and attended a private school for children with issues like his. He graduated and now works in healthcare.

This doesn't even get into the fact that cops aren't legally obligated to protect you as evident in what happened in Uvalde. So, what they really are there for is intimidation, basic rule enforcement, and dealing out punishment (as mentioned). When it comes to real threats like a school shooter(why they were there to begin with) they don't have to do anything to protect the students.

My high school had SRO's but not a nurse or anything medical. I remember having massive menstrual cramps freshman year (which turned out to be PCOS later) and limping over to the admin building asking where the nurse's office is. Found out they didn't have one. I then asked if there was any sort of medical kit or if any of them had ibuprofen, they said they aren't allowed. The only thing they could do was call my mother to pick me up. For the next few days the SRO that was in the office when I begged for help kept an eye on me like I had some sort of drug problem. It's bad enough dealing with awful periods, but to also have to contain the pain for fear of looking like an addict? Now I'm a music teacher, and I always have a period kit for any student who needs it with pads, tampons, ibuprofen, and chocolate so no girl is left helpless.

I was not easy to deal with when I was in elementary school. I have ADHD and in kindergarten I was incredibly impulsive. I once head butted a kid I liked for no reason and tried to attack another kid with a pool noodle in PE. I thankfully got diagnosed with ADHD and got the extra help and accommodations I needed and turned out perfectly fine. But I’m pretty sure if it weren’t for the fact I was a little white blonde girl with a reputation as normally being well meaning and having a teacher that was experienced in handling ADHD kids I wouldn’t have been diagnosed and instead be labeled a problem child and left to the police to deal with. Kids with special needs can be hard to deal with and sometimes extreme impulsivity can be dangerous but really all kids like me needed is help and patience.

My wife taught at a school where the SRO threatened to arrest and charge a victim is sexual abuse with rape because the victim herself was underage. The vice principal and my wife lost her shit on the officer, accused the officer of overstepping her role as SRO, so the PD stopped placing an SRO in the school. As a result, security incidents in the school continued to never happen.

For the NRA to still hold their Conference was immoral, to be polite.

I'm not crying, YOU'RE crying 😭 Kids DESERVE TO BE KIDS👏👏👏 I WISH MORE PARENTS UNDERSTOOD THAT 👏

We had an SRO when I was in high school that was clearly there for the power trip. Talked to students as if they were inmates and behaved almost exactly the same way thats discussed here. Just this year, he was arrested in a sting for trying to pay for a child prostitute. This man had assumed authority over high schoolers for years. Obviously this isn't a blanket statement for all SRO's, but knowing what I know now, it's terrifying to think back and remember how much power he had and how he could have possibly abused it more than what we saw.

We are now living in a world where a child says "School Is a prison" and ACTUALLY HAS A POINT.

Whenever I watch John Oliver from Europe, I honestly ask myself: How are the US so fundamentally broken and still a country? It is beyond bizarre...

I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the concept of police officers in schools (I’m french) How can so many Americans not even realise that this problem, school shootings, simply doesn’t exist in most countries ? Simply because we do not have free access to guns I am forever baffled that americans think they live in the most developed country in the world when they make the dark ages look evolved

I went to a really diverse public high school. White kids were actually the minority. And at lunches they had SRO officers stand at the gate to the lunch room to stop kids from leaving (ig so students wouldn’t just leave school for the day). And one time I went to leave because I had somewhere to be. And the SRO literally just let me walk past him (I’m half hispanic and I look pretty much white). Not 5 seconds later a black student tried to walk through the gate and he was stopped and the SRO asked for his pass. I was shocked. And this was at a very diverse school, I can’t even imagine what SRO officers are like at a school with hardly any students of color I remember being 5 years old and hearing about a cop getting arrested and being blown away because I thought cops couldn’t do bad things. How I wish I’d been right

The only thing resource officers do well is speed up the school to prison pipeline. Remove all the middle steps and just go directly from school to prison.

The main problems with the "we need more cops in schools" is that the Uvalde cops a) didn't do anything for over an hour and b) didn't have the legal obligation to act to deal with the problem. So how does "putting more cops in schools" fix the problem with cops not doing anything or legally HAVING to do anything?

My high school had an SRO, and the only thing I ever remember him doing is tackling a black kid and kneeling on them for a couple minutes because they raised their voice at a white kid. That man made me afraid of him, and I didn't know anyone who ever said they felt safer with him in the room.

So many things here are so difficult to believe watching from another country. Police in schools, children being arrested for minor instances, and of course the complete denial of the fact that guns are dangerous and shouldn't be sold like vegetables in a market.

Considering how many cops I've dealt with who think the badge is just a license to bully... sticking one in a school sounds like their absolute dominance wet dream. Not remotely surprised to hear they're a problem more often than a help.

"Teachers get apples because an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and we don't have the money to go to the doctor" (from my wife, who is a teacher)

Yet again, brilliant and thought provoking. Thank you.

In middle school, after a cafeteria food fight, the school cops lined us all (everyone in the cafeteria, not just those who threw food) against the walls with our hands behind our heads like we were gang members. In highschool, I was talking to a "family counselor" about family problems. A family counselor apparently is only there to provide kids with clothes or school supplies they may need to borrow for the day. I talked to this person and was asking if I should call the police on a family member for an incident that previously happened and used the phrase, "pull the trigger". It was clear that the metaphorical trigger was reporting an incident that happened. That person sent me to a person who is supposed to talk about stuff like that. Afterwards, while chatting with my counselor, two cops asked my counselor to leave her own office and they stripped search me (I was allowed to keep my underwear on) and dumped my belongings and locker. It's fucking insane.

When I was in high school I was dealing with stuff like bullying and mental health issues and home drama and I wrote an angry letter to my school counselor about how I was pissed about how stuff was going and about how I didn't want to go to school anymore Im no way in that letter did I make a threat against anyone at the school or any of my classmates, I didnt even own a gun nor do I like guns. The one time I had the chance to fire a gun at a shooting range with my uncle I chickened out becuase I genuinely don't like guns nor do I like being around them A day or two passed and my school resource officer pulled me into the principles office along with my dad and he made all these threats like "I could put you away for a long time" and they were actively treating me like I was some potential shooter and this guy was making so many threats and I started to cry and this dude legitimately starts laughing at me. I guess he liked seeing gay nerd kids cry. For like the next month this officer was ghosting me fallowing me around like I was some sort of active threat that needed to be monitored and I ended up pulling out of high school over it. These are not "good guys with guns" People need to stop acting like every police officer is some sainted holy white knight. they aren't.

Canadian here. I always assumed when Americans talked about school police, they were referring to a fancy security guard, it never even crossed my mind that you'd have ACTUAL POLICE just in schools at all times

In middle school I was bullied constantly and as much as it bothered me, it never got under my skin. But in 8th grade, those same bullies started with my disabled little brother. They jumped him and left him bloodied and bruised because he defended a girl they were picking on. My little brother was the one who was taken by the SRO and suspended for 14 days. When he was finally allowed back those kids told me they were going to beat him again unless I stuck a paper clip in a light socket for their own amusement. To protect my little brother, I did it and inadvertently started a small fire after some sparks caught on some crumbled up paper balls on the floor near the outlet. I was arrested and faced being charged with misdemeanor arson and had to finish 8th grade in something they called “Sheriff School” which was essentially boot camp that lasted until I finished 8th grade and moved into high school. They told my parents sheriff school would serve as an alternative to charging me with a misdemeanor which they thought would be the best course to prevent a criminal file. Unfortunately, it still showed up and I lost a sports scholarship to attend a private school and lost the ability to qualify for the (then known as) Florida Bright Futures Scholarship where I could attend a good college. Even though I graduated top of my class with a 5.7 GPA. Those SROs allowed my little brother to get bullied until he finished middle school. On the other side of that coin though, there was an amazing SRO who protected him throughout high school and often helped him any time he had a problem whether personal or school related. We don’t need more militarized SROs in school, we need more compassionate ones who genuinely care for the students and are there as a means of counseling, teaching, and protecting out kids.

Imagine having a data set large enough to come to statistical conclusions when the data set is "fatal shootings on school ground" What a country. America first indeed.

I work at a pet store and I can honestly say that throwing large towels over birds is actually very effective at catching them

In British schools we have old infrastructure, no psychologists or therapists or any kind of official medical care apart from a few first aid kits

I was searched n harassed over 100 times by our cop at our jr high school …between 8 and 9 th grade changed us and how viewed world…who targeted all of us native American students and wonder why most of us grow up not liking them smh

Dude. I’m a teacher in Japan now and sometimes my students ask me about my school life growing up. At first I didn’t think much of it, but as I described the metal detectors and cameras and police officers I started to feel embarrassed. That shit is weird and wrong and I grew up with it my whole adolescent life. I had to take my belt off every morning. Be wanded down. And still all sorts of violent actions happened at school… it’s so humiliating. It’s embarrassing to think back on. America should be ashamed of itself.

When I was in highschool, there was a fight between two students (No weapons involved, no one was hurt, not a major fight) The SRO decided the best way to stop the fight was to release the entire canister of his police grade pepper spray down the hall. The entire hallway had to be evacuated. The two kids fighting got more injured from the SRO than each other. And multiple kids had asthma attacks from it, some of which did not have their inhalers on hand and were forced to take the long walk, outside in the heat (because they couldnt get back in through the hallway) to the front office to get their inhaler. SROs are just cops with even less empathy for kids.

“Not your business? Oh no my good bitch, that is very much your business!” Best quote every “oh no my good bitch” should be on tshirts

Another thing is that additional alpha male in school who has the "authority " to follow busy teachers to our cars or around dark corners in the halls. I've had at least three SROs that tried to inject themselves into my personal life.

America needs a police presence in every school about as much as it needs a police presence in every home. If the danger is so high that you think the police need to be present at all times, maybe there might be something you’re ignoring about the status quo.