Santa Rosa School Board to reexamine officers on campus program

After weeks of local, national and global civil rights protests sparked by the police killing of a Black man in Minneapolis on May 25, Sonoma County’s largest school district is reexamining its relationship with the Santa Rosa Police Department which has for nearly 25 years stationed school resources officers on the district’s middle and high school campuses.

Santa Rosa City Schools Trustee Omar Medina recently launched a petition on his website urging the district to end the official relationship with SRPD. The item is expected to be addressed by the school board at their regular meeting Wednesday.

“I think this is 100% the right thing to do given the state of law enforcement and the state of race relations in our society,” Medina said. “I want them out of our schools.”

The school resource officer program was launched in 1996 with grant funding and had an officer splitting time between Santa Rosa High, Santa Rosa Middle and Ridgway high schools. It has expanded and evolved, most notably after the 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School, to include emphasis on school safety.

But critics have charged that having uniformed officers on campus creates anxiety and in some cases trauma, especially for students of color who have not have positive experiences with law enforcement. Complaints have also been raised that students feel surveilled on campus.

As communities across the country have pushed efforts to defund police departments, similar efforts are afoot to disband on-campus police programs. Districts in Minneapolis, Portland, Denver, Seattle and Oakland have all made moves to remove officers from schools.

Currently, the program in Santa Rosa has five officers assigned to 10 schools: Five high schools and their corresponding middle school. In 2010, in a move described as fiscally driven, the district voted to end its financial contribution to the program beginning in 2010-11, which at that time was $250,000 of an approximately $1 million program. The district currently contributes nothing financially to the program.

Medina’s petition had 614 signatures on Saturday afternoon. A petition to keep SROs on campus, launched early Wednesday on Change.org by Officer Kyle Boyd, had garnered 1,194 endorsements.

Police defend program

Santa Rosa Police Chief Ray Navarro called the program a long-term success based both on safety and building relationships. He expressed hope the program would remain in place.

“I think there are perceptions that we have our officers on campus to … go out and make arrests. That is not at all what it is,” he said. “We do deal with criminal issues that come up, but for the most part we are working on restorative resources, mentorship and positive contact.”

“This may be the first time anybody comes in contact with a police officer in a uniform and it’s a positive contact. We want to be able to show that we are there to help people,” he said.

Navarro said members of the department would be willing to attend Wednesday’s online board meeting to answer questions from the board members.

Santa Rosa Police Officers Association President Stephen Bussell said despite current protests and civic unrest, the push to end the program took many in the department off guard.

“But I think we can get through it with dialogue,” he said. “What needs to happen is engagement. This is the exact opposite of that. It’s regressive, it’s isolating and divisive.”

Bussell, who is slated to become the resource officer at Maria Carrillo High in August, called such officers partners with school staff and administrators and said they bring to a campus skills that others don’t.

“We are there for guidance and support,” he said. “It could be abusive homes, it could be truancy, it could be criminal activity.”

“It’s really about how people perceive the police. Being on campus is a situation that can break those barriers down,” he said. “We are part of the community, we live in the community, we work in community.”

Bussell said the past nearly three-plus weeks of protest and unrest - much of it directed at law enforcement - have been difficult.

“I can say this is probably the worst it’s ever been in my 20 years. Which obviously indicates to me that something needs to change,” he said.

Other professionals suggested

The school resource officer program has earned plaudits in the past.

In May 2019, Officer Matt Crosbie was heralded for his response to reports of a student with a gun on the campus of Santa Rosa High. Hours after the initial call, officers took a 15-year-old student, who had a realistic-looking BB pistol, into custody. At the time Crosbie told reporters he was familiar with the student, and “that familiarity helped me understand who I was looking for and better prepared me.”

In March of 2019, Officer Chris Morrison made national news when she was recorded singing “Rainbow Connection” to a Slater Middle School special education student who was struggling silently. The song, when Morrison finished, ended the impasse and brought out a smile.

But Medina and others contend that services provided by the officers can be offered by other professionals - social workers, counselors - who do not elicit the same anxious response for some students.

Trustee Stephanie Manieri said in her four years at Elsie Allen, her experience with school resource officer Orlando Macias was positive. But she knows that is not the case for all students.

“In my experience, the most positive part about having an SRO on campus was having a supportive adult making a trusted relationship,” she said. “I think there are better people, in better positions, to really help students.”

“Even though I had a positive experience, that was just one experience,” she said. “There are many, many other students who do not have that positive experience.”

‘I don’t feel safer’

When the issue of evaluating the future of the program was first raised at the June 3 school board meeting, board members spoke emotionally of personal experiences of being targeted, harassed, pulled over and dismissed by law enforcement.

“I want them out of our schools,” Medina said. “For me, I come at it from the lens of a person of color, an individual that went to our schools as a student of color. In part it’s my experience with law enforcement, period. When I encounter law enforcement I don’t feel safer.”

Board President Laurie Fong, who spent years as principal at Montgomery High School, credited school resource officers with building familiarity and relationships with students that can help in moments of stress, whether it is a physical fight or a lockdown.

“I have seen many good things with them on campus, period,” she said. “That was my perspective and role as a principal then. But now I understand that there are many other perspectives that we have to pay attention to.”

Fong, who said she is conscious of “my own privilege as an Asian American woman who doesn’t get thrown to the curb,” called any dialogue about the future of the program positive.

“It’s incumbent on us to check our own privilege and perspective,” she said.

Superintendent Diann Kitamura echoed the call for dialogue.

“This is such a difficult time right now,” she said. “It actually brings up visceral emotions in people and I’m so empathetic and totally understand. It is fearful for people who have had experiences with law enforcement that have been negative to think about law enforcement on our campus. I understand that.”

“I want to have a discussion. I want us to talk about this,” she said.

Bussell said he will be on hand at the June 24 meeting to answer trustee and community questions.

“We are not opposed to change and compromise,” he said. “We need to see what the community is telling us, listen and address those issue to the best of our ability. However that looks, we are in partnership with the school system. If it needs to look different, we should have those conversations, absolutely.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.