ACLU, Over 150 Civil Rights Orgs Urge President Biden to Finish Federal Funding for Police in Colleges – YubaNet

NEW YORK, Feb.25, 2021 – The American Civil Liberties Union and over 150 civil rights organizations – including the National Urban League, the National Disability Rights Network, and community-led organizations like Dignity in Schools – sent a letter to President Biden calling on him today to issue an implementation ordinance that eliminates federal police funding in schools. Hundreds of thousands of children – disproportionately black and brown children and children with disabilities – are handcuffed, detained, referred to law enforcement agencies and arrested in schools across the country each year.

School districts across the country are receiving federal funding from the Justice Department to hire police for their schools. The Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office donated $ 50 million to school police in 160 school districts and communities across the country in 2020 alone. The letter urges President Biden to redirect his proposed $ 300 million investment into the DOJ’s COPS office, which funds direct school housing for the police, and instead into hiring more mental health professionals Invest in supporting community and community security strategies that can free our school police.

“Federal funding for the police in schools finances the criminalization as well as the mental and physical damage to our students, especially for black and brown students with and without disabilities, who are disproportionately attacked by the police in schools,” he said West Resendes, Skadden Fellow of the ACLU Disability Rights Program. “Youth and community groups have been saying this for years – students need more support in the form of counselors and other support staff and services – not police officers – in our schools. President Biden must do everything in his power to stop monitoring our students with federal funds and instead invest in our students and communities. “

The letter arrives before the White House, which will present its budget for fiscal year 2022, which is expected to be released next month. The groups are calling on the Biden government to come up with a budget specifically forbidding any federal police funding in schools, and calling on Biden to approve the law on counseling rather than criminalization in schools.

This comment can be found online here: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-over-150-civil-rights-orgs-urge-president-biden-end-federal-funding-police

You can find the letter here: https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-biden-calling-end-school-police-funding

A related blog can be found here: https://www.aclu.org/news/disability-rights/president-biden-stop-funding-the-policing-of-our-students