Wyoming School Safety Part 2: School Violence, Violent Crime and SROs

by Tom Rose

First of all let's just state outright: school violence is genuinely terrifying for all concerned. The issue at hand is whether draconian measures as directed by the Department of Homeland Security are relevant, necessary or even beneficial for Wyoming.

We began by consideration of the findings and recommendations of Wyoming Governor Mead's School Safety and Security Task Force established in 2013 and heavily sponsored by the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security.

The Task Force broke out into three subcommittees to study: 1. Increased School Resource Officers; 2. School's Facility Analysis to increase "controlled access systems" and 3. Crisis Response Planning and Training. We will examine each of these more closely beginning with increasing the presence of SROs in Wyoming schools.

We have blogged on the topic of SROs for several weeks now beginning with Keeping Kids Out of Jail and Outsourcing School Discipline, and including The Troubling Trend of Elementary School Arrests and Alternative Directions for In-School Discipline.

This blog will focus more narrowly on the recommendations of Governor Mead's School Safety and Security Task Force and how the underlying assumptions and assertions are not proven true by Wyoming's documentable statistics. If policies are pursued based on, at best, flawed information Wyoming could well see a near future with all of the negative aspects of implementing these policies with literally no discernable benefit at all.

The full recommendations of the School Safety and Security Task Force can be read here: http://wyohomelandsecurity.state.wy.us/documents/schoolsafetyandtaskforcereport.pdf

The task force was comprised of representatives of:

• State of Wyoming Agencies
• Wyoming School District
• Intelligence and Security Officers
• Law Enforcement
• Legislators from the Wyoming House of Representatives

Relevant people not represented, considered or consulted were:

• Parents and Families of Juveniles affected
• Communities and Businesses where these changes will be implemented
• Juvenile lawyers, defense advocates, public defenders and guardians ad litem to address the increased criminal charges these changes will trigger
• Child psychologists to consider the psychological impacts of these programs on the children

In fact, there were no task force members whose focus was on protecting the rights and freedoms of the children and families who will be directly affected by these policy recommendations.

The School Resource Officer (SRO) Subcommittee indicated that the relevant legislation for state funding was: HB230 requesting $2.3 million for Wyoming state funded SROs and a line item in SF105 proposing $250,000 in funding for a school safety study. (The second referenced legislation appears to be related to hospital funding so it may have been written by the task force in error).

By admission of the task force and all other juvenile and school experts, Wyoming has never had a school shooting. Wyoming has one of the lowest violent crime incident statistics in the country. SROs do not decrease crime in schools. In fact, several studies by national experts indicate that SROs increase crimes in schools, as illustrated in the following chart.

A report out of the Justice Policy Institute entitled Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools states: "Pushing kids out of school by focusing on law enforcement responses and punitive policies toward behavior ultimately results in more incarceration and reduced community well-being."

The SRO subcommittee indicated that the "…need for having School Resource Officers was first identified in a 2006 study drafted by the Wyoming Department of Education". No links were provided for this study. There was no indication that this study was considered in any legislative committee. There was no indication that this study was considered by any legal or juvenile rights experts. In fact, it appears that this so-called "need" for SROs was established simply because the 2006 study said so.

Cited as justification for increasing SROs in schools is NASRO, the National Association of School Resource Officers which quite obviously has a vested interest in recommending the increased usage of SROs. According to NASRO, public schools have become safer in recent decades and school crime is decreasing. They claim that this decrease coincides with the increased presence of SROs but they do not in any way create or prove a causative link. In other words, juvenile crime is decreasing and is less violent now than it was a couple of decades ago but this is not in any way because of increased presence of SROs. For a comprehensive study on the decreasing trend of juvenile crime read: Education Under Arrest: The Case Against Police in Schools.

Another issue with the Task Force findings is that this 61 page report is based on 55 survey results. That number is correct: in a state comprised of more than 500,000 people, this task force successfully surveyed 55 people. This was not 55 random people but a specific, biased and targeted survey. Of the 55 survey participants, 39 described themselves as "School Superintendents". This isn't to say that school superintendents cannot have opinions but they do not have day-to-day interaction with students or parents and it seems incorrect to base policy solely on such a small, skewed sample.

Another issue raised by respondents was the salary and benefits package expected and mandated by such organizations as NASRO. According to one respondent, Wyoming SRO salaries were $78,064.20 annually. Additionally, national agencies such as the BIA supply free uniforms, equipment, vehicles and training.

To understand how out-of-line for Wyoming this salary is, consider the following.

According to teachersalaryinfo.com Wyoming teachers average just under $55,000 in annual salary. The U.S. Census Bureau puts average Wyoming salary at no higher than $56,000 as of the latest census data. According to indeed.com (a popular employment recruitment website) the average salary for a law enforcement officer in the state of Wyoming is $23,000. Paying SROs literally three times the average salary of other police officers does not seem right, nor does it sit well to pay SROs significantly higher than teachers.

One survey respondent, identified as a law enforcement officer from Lander went on at great length and several pages of his or her response are available in the report beginning at page 26. Because it appears that policy recommendations were largely based on this one individual's responses, some of the more inflammatory contentions are specified here along with proven statistical contradictions.

This respondent makes an early statement of: "…we know of no instance where a school was attacked when an SRO was present…" How about Columbine?

"…frequency and severity of local violent crimes involving teenagers is on the rise."

The following chart shows violent indexed crime for juveniles 2006-2011 comparing Wyoming to national rates according to rates per 100,000 juveniles.

This does not illustrate violent juvenile crime on the rise.

As shown on the chart, Wyoming rates for violent indexed juvenile crime are very low compared to national rates. Fremont County is indeed higher than Wyoming's overall rate but it is still approximately half of the national rate.

In order to get a perspective of the scale of alleged violent crime for juveniles, the following chart is based on actual counts. Since the incident at Sandy Hook and Columbine are widely used to justify SROs we've compared Connecticut, Colorado and Wyoming.

The above chart is based on FBI arrest statistics. The actual counts of juvenile violent indexed crime for the state of Wyoming in 2011 was 49 compared to 625 in Colorado and 639 in Connecticut. As a point of clarification, Fremont County had a total of five (5) violent indexed juvenile crimes in 2011. It seems ludicrous to set policy based on five incidents, doesn't it?

Another quote from the Lander respondent: "It is very possible 95 percent of Lander high school and middle school students could obtain a gun if so inclined."

It is true that Wyoming is a state of high gun ownership. Responsible and legal hunting, Wilderness hazards such as grizzly bears and wolves are some of the quite legitimate reasons for gun ownership. What is rarely revealed despite Wyoming's high gun ownership is that Wyoming has a very low weapons-related arrest rate.

Again we have compared Wyoming to Colorado (home of Columbine) and Connecticut (home of Sandy Hook).

The task force quotes from this single Lander respondent continue on with contentions of violent gangs on the Wind River reservation – a contention which overall violent crime statistics contradict.

The following chart illustrates indexed violent adult arrests for Colorado, Connecticut and Wyoming.

Do the Wyoming statistics appear to reflect a "…growing problem with violent crime…"?

The point of all of this is not to poke fun at people who are operating out of a genuine sense of fear. Violence is frightening. School violence is frightening and horrifying. It is understandable that we as a people want to do everything in our power to avoid school violence and particularly school shootings where innocent lives are lost.

This blog is intended to be a reality check lest we institute bad and costly policy because of groundless fear. Yes, these are scary problems but no, they are not relevant for Wyoming.

Before we turn our attention to the findings of the other subcommittees let's close with a quote from this same Lander respondent:

"We have to be careful we don't take the approach that SRO's will prevent school violence. I believe they definitely can play a role in securing a school but if someone is hell-bent on violence in a school, they will more than likely accomplish their goal. Hardening the schools with strict guidelines for entry might do more good."

Finally let's consider a quote from a different respondent to the task force survey:

It is a sad commentary on our society that we even have to think about this type of security for our children

But that's the thing. We don't. Instead of making fear-based decisions, policies and funding based on inflammatory misinformation from other states let's take Wyoming back to its citizens and make policies relevant to the needs, wants and rights of our actual residents.