By Sruthi Gottipati

It’s the fifth largest police force in the country. But it isn’t the Mafia or drug lords that that these police officials have their eye on. They’re focused on the teenage students who attend public school in New York City.

With 5,249 officers charged with security at more than 1,500 public schools, the New York Police Department’s school safety division is larger than the police forces of Washington D.C., Dallas or Detroit – and their presence is palpable for some students.

“I see about 30 to 35 cops just on my side of the school building,” observes Chasity Soriano, a 15-year-old student of the Bushwick School for Social Justice. Three years ago she was handcuffed to a chair in the school’s main office for arguing with a friend, she says.

“They (the school safety agents) told me to shut up and relax and not to move,” claims the Queens resident, adding, “they portrayed me as an animal.” Strip searches in school, according to Soriano, occur two to four times a week.

The City Council will soon vote on the Student Safety Act, a bill that would require quarterly reporting by the Department of Education and NYPD to the City Council on school safety and disciplinary issues, including incidents involving arrests and suspensions of students. The act, introduced by Council member Robert Jackson in August 2008, could be the first step in keeping a tighter check on policing in schools.

“Right now, there’s no formal mechanism to report misconduct by school safety agents, people have to go to great lengths to complain about them,” says Jen Carnig, Director of Communications, New York Civil Liberties Union. The NYPD received 2,670 complaints against school safety agents between 2002 and 2007, according to a 2007 letter Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent to the City Council’s education committee.

NYPD officials say they would require the addition of more than 100 police members to handle the anticipated increase in complaint receipt and investigation and to fulfill the recordkeeping responsibilities if the Student Safety Act is passed. “At a time when the City’s resources are under severe strain, we suggest the enactment of Intro 816-A (the Student Safety Act) as written would compromise our ability to maintain safety and security in the City’s public schools,” says Assistant Chief James Secreto, Commanding Officer, School Safety Division, NYPD, in a November 10, 2009, statement before the City Council.

In the past six years, dwindling education budgets and pressure to raise test scores has led to a 65 percent increase in the school safety division along with a tendency to refer disruptive students to the police and the courts instead of working with them in a collaborative manner, say NYCLU members. Moreover, this quick-fix solution has come with a price-tag of $221 million.

Shoshi Doza, a youth organizer for Jackson Heights-based South Asian non-profit Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) asserts that many parents and students complain to her about aggressive policing in schools. “There’s a lack of training of police officials on how to deal with youth,” she states.

The fallout has been that students, many under the age of 16, have been arrested for non-criminal violations such as disruptive conduct. However, it’s hard to pinpoint numbers as no clear data has been made available by the police.

The NYCLU claims that NYPD consistently ignores or unreasonably delays Freedom of Information Law requests on police-student interactions. The Department of Education also delayed providing information on student suspensions and discharges for almost a year and even then furnished only a partial response, the NYCLU says.

The Student Safety Act will require such information to be made available easily through periodic reports to the City Council and DOE.

Although Secreto acknowledges receiving 1,159 complaints in 2008 of “misconduct or other type of incidents involving school safety agents”, he says only 15 percent of that number actually alleged unnecessary force, abuse of authority, discourtesy or offensive language.

The department also points to statistics that indicate the need for school safety agents. Since the functions of the Board of Education’s Division of School Safety were transferred to the Police Department in 1998, total crime in schools has reduced by 34 percent over nine years ending in the 2008-2009 school year, testifies Secreto. Furthermore, since September, total crime has decreased by an additional 27 percent from the year prior, violent crime dropped by 22 percent, non-criminal incidents fell by 29 percent and the possession of weapons and “dangerous instruments” declined by 32 percent.

“These dramatic decreases are of course attributable to the hard work of many people,” says Secreto, “but it is clear that the school safety agents are the backbone of school security.” He refutes claims that they are inadequately trained to deal with youth, saying they go through a comprehensive 14-week training course upon being hired.

Challenging unauthorized visitors, removing unruly students and taking enforcement action when necessary are required to maintain order in schools, the NYPD says. It cites a 2009 Department of Education survey showing that 76 percent of students and 92 percent of teachers feel safe in their schools, while 93 percent of parents believe their children are safe as well.

“Police officers and school safety agents are trained to utilize aggressive street policing tactics that are inappropriate for schools,” says Udi Ofer, advocacy director at the NYCLU, who believes their training is inadequate to meet the developmental needs of students and those with disabilities.

Every morning as Chanwatie Ramnauth, 15, walks on the school grounds of Hillcrest High School in Queens, she’s confronted by three or four metal detectors. That’s followed by another minefield of eight or nine metal detectors in the front room and five more in the hallway.

Secreto emphasizes that scanning is an invaluable tool in schools claiming it, “routinely results in the discovery and seizure of hundreds of dangerous weapons each year.”

However, NYCLU members argue that a vast majority of items confiscated at metal detectors are not weapons or “dangerous instruments”. Most of the time, the culprits are cellphones and IPods.

While walking down the school hall one day last September, Ramnauth saw a fight break out. “The police pushed me into the wall and I banged my hand really hard but I didn’t know where to complain,” she says at a 75-person strong rally supporting the Student Safety Act on the steps of City Hall in October. Wearing glasses, braces and bright blue polish on her fingernails, she declares that the school safety agents commit “both verbal and physical assaults”.

The students harassed by school safety are disproportionately students of color, students with special needs and immigrants, according to community non-profit organizations. Those of undocumented workers might find it particularly difficult to approach the police.

“There’s definitely a form of bias. Muslim students especially may be laughed at during searches by school safety agents,” says Doza, DRUM’s youth organizer.

Secreto, however, counters that approximately 70 percent of school safety agents are women while about 93 percent are black or Hispanic, adding that, “Virtually all of our school safety agents are city residents, and many are parents with children in the city’s public schools.”

But NYCLU points out that, unlike other school employees, most school safety agents do not participate in anti-bias based harassment and sensitivity trainings that could help them handle students.

The Student Safety Act originally contained a provision to extend the jurisdiction of the Civilian Complaint Review Board to give the public the same right to complain against police behavior in the schools as on the streets. However, this was later removed from the bill for a better shot at passing the Act in the City Council.

“It’s all part of the negotiation process,” explains Council member Melissa Mark-Viverito of Manhattan, who supports the Student Safety Act.

Secreto opposes NYCLU’s efforts to educate the public on how to make a complaint against a school safety agent. “This type of campaign invites students who may be the subjects of necessary action by student safety agents to make retaliatory complaints, in a manner that could serve to chill the very actions that are necessary to keeping the school safe and orderly,” says Secreto.

NYPD officials also believe that a portion of the Student Safety Act will authorize the City Council to go beyond its oversight role, because it will mandate that school safety agents with more than one complaint against them will be reported to the council.

Gregory Floyd, President of Teamsters Local 237, the union representing the school safety agents, takes a much softer approach toward the bill than the NYPD.

“This is valuable information for the public, and Local 237 supports this type of statistical reporting,” he testifies to the City Council. His primary concern is that the Act “unfairly singles out school safety agents as wrongdoers.” He accuses the NYCLU of “urging” students to complain of harassment by distributing leaflets at schools.

However, the contents of the leaflet are just a matter-of-fact explanation to students of their rights. For example, it tells students in trouble to ‘not run away from a student safety agent’ and to ask for a lawyer if they are arrested.

This summer, the NYCLU along with the Annenberg Institute for Social Reform and Make the Road New York released a report on six schools in New York City that were exploring ways to solve student discipline problems without schools safety agents and metal detectors.

Students in these schools were allowed to help frame school rules in order to help them understand their function. The principals in these schools were also more empowered to make decisions on discipline. NYCLU members claim the experiment was successful.

“We’re keen to see principals play a larger role than police personnel in school safety,” says Oona Chatterjee of Make the Road New York, one of the 19 organizations that is a part of the Student Safety Coalition pushing for the Act.