Youth Radio: Study shows negative impact of police in Oakland schools | KALW

20.9.13

Youth Radio: Study shows negative impact of police in Oakland schools | KALW: Seventy two percent of calls from schools to Oakland Unified School District’s police force were regarding reports of what the police force calls “non-criminal conduct.” Misha Cornelius, the Communications Coordinator for the Black Organizing Project, describes “non-criminal conduct” as “gambling, running away, and drinking. These are the things they consider least serious offenses.”

Cornelius had the opportunity to work closely with youth and has heard personal stories of how policing at schools can make youth feel threatened. “There are lots of folks who can testify to the fact that they feel as though police are sometimes biased in the way that they do their policing,” says Cornelius. “They kind of have preemptive models of policing or predictive models of policing where they can see someone and they assume that that person has done something they haven’t just because of the way they look, the color of their skin, the way they dress….”