By Susan Abrams

Chronicle of Social Change

As a 10th grader at Sacramento’s Luther Burbank High School, Stephanie Lopez remembers when she saw a school resource officer treat her brother like a criminal.

Her brother had bumped into the officer and apologized, Lopez said. But the officer proceeded to question him and asked him for his ID.

“It was all new to me,” said Lopez, now 17 and a senior, of the aggressive approach the officer used with her brother. “When I was younger, I wanted to be a police officer. When I got to high school, I finally saw what it’s like for us, for people of color. It really angered me, because I didn’t notice it in my childhood.”

As a result, more students such as Stephanie are organizing to confront school boards in California about feeling threatened, uneasy and unsafe with the police presence on their campuses. The goal is to pressure school boards to drop contracts to staff school resource officers, or SROs, and use the funds to pay for more mental health experts, counselors, nurses, librarians and other staff they say are lacking on their campuses.

The campaigns have not completely pushed out SROs, but some districts have drafted memorandums of understanding to address how school resource officers are used and the kind of services they can and cannot provide […]

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