Are police officers needed in schools to prevent gun violence?
November 11 was marked by a new incident involving weapons, this time in Laval, near Montmorency College. Three people were shot and the school was closed until 22:00
This tragedy is the latest in a long series of shootings that occurred in the Montreal area this year. In response to this armed violence, the authorities announced the creation of an intervention team for schools in Montreal: the Équipe-école. La Converse looked at this initiative.
Quartier Saint-Michel, 4 p.m. on October 7. In the gymnasium of a high school, twenty young people are active on the soccer field. Whistles are heard; La Converse sneaks up to interview the adolescents present on the Multidisciplinary School Intervention Team, better known as the Équipe-école.
Announced last September by the City of Montreal and the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), this initiative aims to create a team made up of police officers and professionals to prevent armed violence in neighborhoods affected by this phenomenon.
On the sports field, the young people banded together at the request of their coach. We ask them if they have heard about this new structure, whose members will be involved in high schools. The answer is simple: no one knows what it is. Moreover, we will notice the same ignorance of the project among the 20 other young people we will interview later.
However, these meetings raised questions among adolescents about how the Équipe-École project worked and how it was designed. Parents are also asking these questions, as well as community organizers and an education professional with whom we spoke on the subject.
What is the Équipe-école project?
The role of the School Team is to act “as a hub between schools, neighborhood posts and various institutional and community actors”, indicates the SPVM. The municipal police thus intends to “further support specialized actors”, in particular through preventive activities. To support this new structure, the Quebec Ministry of Public Security will invest more than $4 million over the next three years. For its part, the City of Montreal is contributing up to $400,000.
The school team will be composed of 11 members: 5 uniformed police officers and 6 professionals from civil society. These include three community development counsellors. At the request of school administrators, agents will intervene in secondary schools with young people who have violent or at-risk behavior. However, police officers will not be based in schools.
Alain Vaillancourt, head of public safety on the City of Montreal's executive committee, specifies that the interventions of the School Team could, for example, lead to actions to raise awareness among parents and teachers on issues such as social networks.
The police are already intervening in schools
Police in schools is not a recent reality. At the end of the 1980s, the Sûûté du Québec created the function of “police officer intervening in schools”. Today, students are familiar with “community social workers.” They perform their duties in elementary and secondary schools to, among other things, give presentations on bullying, sexual violence, violence prevention. Their role is also to identify young people who are likely to be involved in criminal matters.
The Équipe-École project, which is due to start in mid-December, will also be based on a reference framework created in 1999 and updated in 2013, entitled “Police presence in educational institutions”.
What do young people think?
“When I was in high school, there was a lot of violence, and some of my friends ended up in the hospital because of problems they had at school,” says Anis, 20, coach of a youth soccer team in Saint-Michel. “So, if it is possible to put more people in, that would be good,” he concludes.
“The simple fact of having the police in the schools will prevent students from fighting,” said a teenager sitting on a soccer field.
Marwa, a 2nd year CEGEP student in Hochelaga, also thinks that the project could contribute to reducing delinquency among young people.
On the other hand, some students expressed reservations about the project. “If you are close to the police, people will call you a snitch (snitch, traitor, editor's note); you have to be careful, because no one will want to have a link with you”, a high school student tells us.
Amadou, 15, believes that the simple presence of police officers in a school could disturb students. “It's not that you're afraid, it's just that nobody likes it — it's disturbing. Sometimes, we're there with friends arguing, teasing each other for nothing; we're kidding, it's nothing serious. They will think that we are fighting,” he explains. Then, he makes another argument: “Let me give you an example: you are in a car and you are driving; well, nobody likes to drive with a police vehicle behind them that follows them. It doesn't matter if you do something right or wrong.”
Other students note that the presence of the police in schools is already common and doubt the effectiveness of the approach. “When I was in high school in Saint-Léonard, we often saw police officers in the corridors with the interveners; they were always close,” reports Kader, a CEGEP student.
“At my school, there were security guards,” says another CEGEP student, “but that did not reduce the violence. Students who wanted to fight went to the pizzeria outside the school.”
Several of the visible minority youth we met also noted that policing in schools is not, in their opinion, a safety factor. “We, when the police come to our schools, it's not to talk,” says one of them.
A criticized consultation
The City of Montreal indicates that it consulted more than twenty young people last March to gather their opinion on the fight against armed violence. The link with these young people was established through community organizations.
This consultation took place as part of a video conference that lasted only two hours. Abdellah Azzouz is one of the 27 young people who participated in this working session. “I think that the City should have done more ground and not just go through community organizations,” he says. It would be better to go ask questions to a young person who is not necessarily prepared to answer questions and who will say what he really thinks.” He considers that the number of young people interviewed is too low, but recognizes, however, that the City of Montreal has made an effort to consult young people.
This question of the representativeness of the young people encountered by the City came up several times in our discussions with high school and CEGEP students. For example, a college student fears that adolescents will exercise restraint or partially censor themselves in their interactions with the institution. According to him, a meeting of this type is not neutral. Young people, mostly from marginalized or stigmatized communities, could lack spontaneity in their responses or even integrate preconceived ideas that one might have of them into their interactions.
In addition, a coalition of community organizations denounced the project during a press conference on September 29. “We are very concerned about the spirit of the project, the way it was designed and the impact it will have on our young people and our families,” explained Slim Hammami, coordinator of the Multicultural Youth Café in Montréal-Nord. It regrets that the community and parents were not consulted or informed about this project, and is concerned that young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods are more stigmatized by this project.
An initiative that reassures parents
Jacques Langlois, a parent and president of the school board of the high school his child is attending, welcomes the Équipe-école project. “As a parent, I want the police to protect students,” he says. He also wants the SPVM to strengthen its relationships with his daughter's school. In his opinion, the Équipe-école project therefore represents an “opportunity” for schools and police services to combat the increase in violence in schools.
On the other hand, he wants students to be consulted by the school administration before the Équipe-école program is implemented. “It is essential to know the limits of the students. We need to know what they want and what they don't want to ensure the success of the project,” concludes the father of the family.
Around Louis-Joseph-Papineau school, all parents interviewed by La Converse said they were reassured by the Équipe-École project. They believe that this initiative “will deter a lot of violence in the surrounding areas and in schools.”
A program that raises concerns
Rhoda Nanre Nafziger, assistant professor at McGill University and member of the École Sans Police collective, understands the concerns of these parents.
However, she believes that using law enforcement is not always an appropriate response to the problem of violence in educational institutions. “As Black parents, we internalize some of the negative ideas that are put forward about us. We tell our children, “Don't be mean,” but we're not asking the system that's hurting them to end this suffering. We blame the child. But we have to understand that no matter what the latter does, the system does not change,”
She fears that an increase in police presence in schools will have the opposite effect and will ultimately increase the number of student incarcerations — we speak of the “school to prison pipeline” in English. This concept, developed in the United States, denounces a system that criminalizes students and takes them to prison as a result of minor offenses committed in schools. Rhoda Nanre Nafziger also fears that the Équipe-école program “primarily targets communities that are already marginalized and young people who may be at risk of leaving school.”
Asked about this, the City of Montreal affirms that the school team will not reproduce the biases observed in the United States.
Marlihan Lopez is another member of the École Sans Police collective, a branch of the Coalition to Defund the Police. The organization was created following the assassinations of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the United States, and those of Chantel Moore and Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Canada.
Marlihan Lopez believes that it is essential to increase awareness-raising actions against bullying in schools. However, she feels that this work is more the responsibility of community organizations than of the police. According to her, these services can no longer be offered adequately because of the budgetary cuts inflicted on the community sector by successive provincial governments.
“[The government and the City] say they have no money to increase teachers' salaries, to have more resources in schools, but the City of Montreal is opening a position of community development advisor for the Équipe-école project, which is around $68,000 to $108,000,” she notes.
Possible solutions
Marlihan Lopez considers that the City of Montreal paid little attention to the opinion of the main stakeholders: “It's not the first time, in fact it's always the same thing. [The City and the police] don't consult and then they come up with these programs and projects,” she laments.
She considers it essential that schools get more funding, that young people have better access to extracurricular activities, psychologists, psychoeducators and teachers who are better trained in their realities.
Stéphanie, a high school teacher who prefers to keep her name quiet, agrees. “We need to better prepare teachers who leave to work in Montreal in the communities present. Because teaching in Montreal is not the same as teaching in the regions. There are details that are important to know,” she notes. She suggests that the training offered to future professors should include more information on Montreal's cultural diversity.
She also focuses on creating strong relationships between parents and the school. “Without the agreement and commitment of parents, the school alone will not be able to do all the work,” she said. She then adds: “People feel that the police are a magic solution. But do you want your child to avoid a behavior because he is afraid to do it or do you want your child to avoid it because he does not want to do it”, she asks.
The 27 young people interviewed by the City also suggested possible solutions, which are presented in a report entitled Perspectives on armed violence: the perspective of young people. In particular, they propose involving young people and their parents in the search for solutions, or even increasing mental health resources for young people.
Asked about the consultation process initiated by the City, Alain Vaillancourt states “[that |it is difficult to consult everyone”. He says that he talked a lot to citizens and organizations that had concerns in order to reduce their apprehensions by clarifying certain aspects of the project. He adds that he has met, through street workers, young people who do not attend community organizations.
For its part, the SPVM communication service specifies the following: “The police officers who will visit the identified schools will be coordination agents, that is to say specialized preventive police officers. They will work jointly with the three civilian community development advisors who will be hired, but also in close collaboration with the socio-community agents of neighborhood posts (PDQ), with the support of the SPVM's civilian community development advisors who are already present in some PDQs in the territory.”
*We interviewed SPVM representatives about the Équipe-École initiative. In particular, we asked them what programs they were inspired by. City police mentioned initiatives put in place in Glasgow, Toronto, New York and Boston. It should be noted that the City of Toronto ended its public high school policing program in 2017. Since 2017, the Toronto Public School Board has in fact decided to remove the uniformed police program in 45 public schools. This initiative was launched in 2008 following the death of Jordan Manners, 15, who was killed in his high school cafeteria. The program was withdrawn from schools following a consultation with 15,000 students, 500 parents, and 100 school staff.