According to Indy Week, 80 schools in Wake County, including some elementary schools, all middle schools, and nearly every high school, are employing School Resource Officers (SROs). Emancipate NC’s Elizabeth Simpson expresses concern about the punitive environment created by this practice. “Not everyone can sit still for eight hours a day as a child,” she says. “But if they can’t do that, they’re going to be routed into incarceration.”
Kerwin Pittman shares his personal experience with SROs in Wake County schools. “The presence of officers in my school never made me feel safe. It made me feel like I was going into the lion’s den,” he says. Pittman recounts being tackled by an SRO in middle school and witnessing the arrest of many peers throughout his education. “None of the members of my community trust law enforcement because we’ve never seen them as models that protected us,” he explains. “We’ve seen them as people we had to be protected from.”
This thought-provoking article highlights the lasting impact of SROs in schools.