FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

School System That Had Student Arrested for Throwing Skittles Accused of Racial Discrimination

Police officers are routinely used to enforce discipline in one Louisiana school system, according to a civil rights group, and black students are being disproportionately arrested.
Photo via Flickr/Hisham Binsuwaif

Not carrying a hallway pass, swearing at administrators, and throwing Skittles at a classmate are all offenses that could potentially land students in hot water at any school in America. But if you're a black kid in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, they could easily get you arrested, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Schools throughout the Jefferson Parish Public School System, located in an area around New Orleans home to more than 400,000 people, are routinely calling police on students for minor disciplinary infractions, alleges the SPLC. African American students are disproportionately targeted, it says, accounting for 80 percent of school arrests despite comprising only 41.5 percent of the Jefferson Parish student population.

Advertisement

The non-profit civil rights organization sent a letter to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and two Department of Education offices last week urging action on "racially discriminatory school-based arrests." A complaint submitted to the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in 2012 has not been acted upon, it alleges, and the situation is worsening.

The SPLC highlights the stories of four black students, including a 9-year-old girl with attention deficit disorder who had police called on her three times during the last year for her "disruptive behaviour." In another case, a 15-year-old boy was charged with battery for throwing Skittles at another student during a bus ride home from school. Police in Terrytown, Louisiana, reportedly pulled the eighth grader out of class the next day and handcuffed him in front of his peers.

School-based arrests can have "life-changing, negative effects," it argues, with studies showing that arresting a student significantly increases the likelihood that they will drop out of school.

Related: San Diego's School District Now Has a Military-Grade Armored Truck

Jefferson Parish has 10 full-time police officers stationed at nine schools, says the SPLC, and has "endorsed a policy where schools, including those who do not have police on campus, regularly call the police on students at school." However the school system has failed to put a policy into place clearly outlining when students should be subject to arrest, and police officers are not properly trained in child development and age-appropriate responses, the letter claims, meaning arrests are routinely made for everyday minor school misbehavior that should be dealt with by teachers.

Advertisement

According to the SPLC, 76 percent of school arrests and seizures in Jefferson Parish between 2009 and 2011 involved black students. The center also claims the school system sticks out when compared to other Louisiana districts, citing similarly sized parishes like East Baton Rouge, where there were zero school-based arrests in the 2011-2012 school year. Jefferson Parish had more than 700 arrests in that same period.

"Despite this initial notification that OCR was opening an investigation into the Jefferson Parish Public School System (JPPSS), this complaint has been sitting open and unresolved for over three years now," the SPLC said, referring to notification from the OCR in 2012 that the federal agency was probing whether the school district discriminates against black students when implementing discipline policies.

"Far from being resolved, the problem of discriminatory arrest and law enforcement referral policies persists and has actually worsened in Jefferson Parish, in violation of both Title VI and Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," the SPLC wrote, explaining why they are pushing the claim a second time.

In a statement to VICE News, the OCR said it could not comment on the matter because it has two pending cases against Jefferson Parish Public Schools System, both filed in 2012.

"Both remain under investigation, and for this reason, OCR cannot disclose any case-specific facts or details," the statement read.

Advertisement

While the OCR could not comment on the case specifically, agency spokesman Raymonde Charles explained the investigation's progress in a separate statement to VICE News. He said the investigation includes combining data, interviews, and site visits to determine whether the findings support a compliance violation. If the investigation reveals that the institution failed to comply with the law, the OCR will take action to resolve the problem.

Related: Should High School Students Be Shown Porn to Learn About Sex?

"Through such resolution agreements with recipients, OCR has been able to attain strong remedies without the need to initiate enforcement actions, either through the initiation of an administrative hearing to terminate federal funding or a referral to the Department of Justice for judicial relief," Charles said. "OCR will monitor the implementation of the agreement until the recipient is in compliance with the statute."

Jefferson Parish public schools spokeswoman Elizabeth Branley told the Guardian in a statement that the school system was concerned by the allegations, saying the district would work out any racial discrimination issues with their disciplinary procedures.

"We pledge to work closely with those agencies involved to quickly resolve any issues that we identify," Branley said. "We are committed to ensuring that our students have a safe, healthy environment and are treated equably at all schools."

These aren't the first allegations about racial discrimination in school disciplinary policies in the US. According to a government study published in 2014, black preschoolers account for about 50 percent of suspensions, despite the fact that black preschool students make up just 18 percent of the total. In general, the study found that black students are expelled and suspended at triple the rate of their white peers.

Photo via Flickr