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Progressive city councils across the country are being forced by violence in and near their public schools to rethink their bans on stationing police officers on those campuses.
Sworn officers returned to Denver schools in March, one day after a high school student shot and wounded two administrators and killed himself. Progressive bastion Portland, after shootings near at least three high schools, began earlier this month considering a $3 million plan for armed patrols around high school campuses beginning next fall.
In Boston, reacting to an assault on a high school principal and a serious school stabbing among other violent acts, 75% of public school parents in a poll in late April, said they want officers back in schools.
Schools in Montgomery County, MD and Alexandria, VA approved restoring patrols after violent incidents. Debate has heated up in progressive Seattle, Pasadena, CA and East Lansing, MI. In Washington, D.C., the progressive council is rethinking its decision to sunset the Metropolitan Police Department’s School Safety Division by July 2025.
Milwaukee Public Schools, which did away with armed officers in schools in 2016, is having the same debate, prompted by a steep increase in the number of calls for police service to Milwaukee high schools. As first reported by the Badger Institute, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said he thought it “likely” officers would return to schools before the end of this year.
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