LA School Board Likely Regrets Defunding Campus Police

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It wasn’t that long ago when people called for defunding the police. It was never all that many, all things considered, but it was a very loud minority who would also call you racist if you disagreed with them. So, as a result, authorities in a number of places capitulated and did precisely what the mobs wanted.

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One of those places was the Los Angeles Unified School District.

As Jazz Shaw writers over at our sister publication Hot Air, it seems, though, they may be regretting that decision.

In February of this year, the school board for the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the largest in the nation, slashed $25 million from the school police budget and eliminated the jobs of more than one-third of the school police officers. Officers are no longer stationed on school campuses. It was all openly and proudly done as part of the “defund the police” movement and the board elected to apply the money they saved to hiring “counselors and social workers” who would be deployed to “interrupt violence.” How do you suppose that’s been working out since the kids have returned to the classrooms?

CBS Los Angeles launched an investigation into that question this month, interviewing police officers, parents, students and school officials at many of the more than 1,000 schools in the LAUSD. What they found was a situation that is far from what the police reform advocates predicted, though it likely won’t come as much of a surprise to our regular readers. Incidents of crime and violence on public school campuses have been steadily rising. Some parents are sheltering their children who have been injured in incidents of campus violence, with some refusing to send their children back. The school administrative officials at some of these schools are definitely experiencing buyer’s remorse and longing for the return of the cops.

In the three months since Los Angeles Unified School District students have been back on campus, a CBS2 News investigation found concerns about increased crime since the school board defunded the police department.

One-third of the school police budget was cut as part of the “defund the police” movement. Officers aren’t stationed at schools, and some parents are worried about safety.

The videos obtained by CBS2 Investigates reveal what some parents are troubled about.

The predictable madness is showing up across the district. One parent named Brittany Jackson described how her 15-year-old daughter was knocked to the ground and beaten until she suffered a broken nose and a concussion. Her mother no longer feels safe sending her to school.

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As Shaw notes, a lot of opponents of “defund the police” said stuff like this would happen, and we’ve been proven right.

After all, Los Angeles may be styled at “The City of Angels,” but it’s not populated by a Heavenly host. It’s made up of people, a lot of which are violent. The city has long had a gang problem and many of these gang members actually attend school in the district. Yet because of how school lines are drawn, you end up with rival gangs in the same school.

Yeah…that’s not a recipe for disaster or anything.

Sure, most of the violence has been fistfights, but it’s happening often enough now that there aren’t uniformed police officers that it’s a clear indicator of a problem.

And let’s not forget that between 600 and 700 people are killed with hands and feet each year. You’d better believe that “fistfights” are still a problem.

Look, I’m not going to say the police are all good and pure as snow. Police forces are made up of people. Some are fantastic while some are akin to something you should scrape off of your shoe. Most are somewhere in between and just trying to do the best they can.

Additionally, those forces are led by people who fall into the same spectrum.

As a result, there may or may not be a need to make changes as needed. Additional training may well be called for, for example. Changes in leadership might be warranted.

However, we need to remember that the “defund the police” movement spurred out of the actions of one officer in one department. Punishing the police force entrusted with keeping a school district safe because of the actions of an officer in Minneapolis is perhaps the stupidest thing you can do.

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Then again, this is LaLaLand we’re talking about here.

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