generalspeaking

Saturday, September 02, 2017

Black Violence - Back to Square One

"Whereas the Falconer report, Roots of Youth Violence, recommended more caring adults in schools such as social workers, child and youth workers, hall monitors ..."
Preamble, Falconer report

"Jordan's death led to the commissioning of a report on violence in schools. The 2008 Falconer report concluded that there are firearms and weapons in "non-trivial" numbers at some Toronto schools. The findings of the report contributed to the formation of the School Resource Officer program which placed Toronto police officers in some schools around the city."
The Globe and Mail

The Toronto District School Board has decided to suspend a program that put armed police officers in 36 of its 75 schools. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)

Racial profiling has such reprehensible connotations. To identify someone as suspicious because their appearance links them to menacing behaviours on the surface seems brutally uncivilized and certainly unfair, quite beyond discriminatory. That's the emotional, empathetic reaction to the fact that certain ethnic groups are routinely -- despite denials to the contrary -- linked to violence. On the other hand, how to react to the reality that within those typecast groups there are those, disproportionate to their presence within the larger society, who do pose as threats, who do engage in violent and threatening behaviour?

Little wonder that it's difficult to suspend vigilance while attempting to forestall threats recognized in the criminal activity that blacks, for example, are prone to in great numbers among the young, and the virulent, vicious nature of terrorism exemplified by Muslims who gravitate toward groups promoting jihad, prepared to launch bloodthirsty attacks in honour of the sacred screed that holds jihad the responsibility of all believers in Islam. Some groups in society such as First Nations peoples struggle with issues of alcoholism and drug dependency.

Those groups, engaging in petty criminal activities, in dealing drugs, in thefts, again disproportionate to their numbers in society, are over-represented in prisons. All of this represents issues of ethnic or religious profiling. But how could it be otherwise for alert authorities hoping through the vigilance of their intelligence agencies and policing agencies to forestall criminal activities, gang action, and terrorist threats? To do otherwise is to ignore the obvious and in so doing fail in the prevention of ongoing crime and threats to the stability of the country and security of its people.

Because Blacks, young black men in particular, are so given to petty crimes, drug dealing, gang activities, violence, threats and terrorizing those from within their own communities come from those communities, when crimes are committed witnesses refuse to come forward to assist police in stemming the threats and the violence. In Toronto, when a 15-year-old black student was shot to death by two 17-year-old students attending a high school in the Jane/Finch corridor known for its Black-on-Black violence, it became urgent to do something.

Toronto police services and the Toronto school board worked out an arrangement that would see police trained in dealing with youth regularly going into the schools to interact with students in an effort to persuade them that the police were not to be feared, distrusted or loathed in a civil society. And the program appeared to be getting its message across; the police learning to understand what drives young men to reject societal norms, and the young students being accustomed to regard police as arbiters of public safety and security.

And then came the entry of an aggressive Black counterprogram rejecting the advances made between civic authorities and the troubled Black community. Black Lives Matter may have had a point in lashing out against the vulnerability of young black men viewed in the aggregate as trouble-prone and dangerous. But their influence in a society that is anxious to atone for past sins against people of colour by excusing their excesses in the present has had and continues to have a deleterious effect in relations between Blacks and their other counterparts.

Now black activists decry the presence of police in schools through the program that has operated successfully for years in acquainting black youth with police, with the intention of instilling trust mutually and a sense of civil cooperation between the two. Their agitation has succeeded in persuading the Toronto District School Board to summarily halt the program, leading the situation back to square one.

Where consideration was given to the practicality of installing weapons detectors in schools, and bringing in gun-sniffing dog teams, and conducting random sweeps of student lockers at all city schools. Where sexual assaults might take place in random events. Where students and teachers struggled to cope with violence, drugs, guns and assorted weapons, and where gangs roamed the schools where they were students. And left school before graduation, finally graduating into the prison system.

Photo published for Police in schools don’t make kids safer: Mochama | Toronto Star

The School Resource Officer program began in the 2008-2009 school year after the tragic death of Jordan Manners at C.W. Jeffreys C.I. the year before. (Pawel Dwulit/Toronto Star file photo / Toronto Star)

BlackLivesMatter TO‏ @BLM_TO Aug 31

Children do not need to be surveilled by cops in schools. What they need more of are Child and Youth Workers, guidance... #NoMoreSROs

13 replies 92 retweets 219 likes
BlackLivesMatter TO‏ @BLM_TO Aug 31