NYC: 12,000 incidents of police removing kids from school

June 3, 2021, NY1 Spectrum News: NYPD removal of students from schools on the rise https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/education/2021/06/03/nypd-removal-of-students-from-schools-on-the-rise

The NYPD removed students from school classrooms, sometimes in handcuffs, and took them to hospitals for psychological evaluations 12,000 times between 2016 and 2020, according to a new analysis by the organization Advocates for Children. The NYPD calls these incidents “child in crisis interventions,” and the data shows they were more likely to happen to some students than others. Twenty-seven percent of the incidents involved Black boys, who make up just 13 percent of the public school population. Twenty percent of the incidents involved Black girls, who make up just 12 percent of total enrollment. And 9 percent of the incidents happened in special education District 75 schools, which serve just 2 percent of the city’s students. “The students who are impacted are largely black students, students with disabilities, in District 75 Special Education schools in particular, as well as low income students,” said Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children…. She believes having the police bring these children to hospitals only makes matters worse. “It only exacerbates the problems that already exist. It does absolutely nothing to change the behavior, improve the behavior, and it further alienates the family from the school,” she said. Mayor Bill de Blasio has often pointed to reforms he’s made to how police interact with students in schools, but the data shows that the number of children removed from classrooms by police during these emotional crises have only grown since the 2016-2017 school year, when the NYPD was first required to report the data. The number of these incidents increased by 24% in the first three quarters of the 2019-2020 school year, as compared to the first three quarters of the 2016-2017 school year, the first for which the NYPD was required to make data public. Advocates for Children is is calling on the Education Department to stop calling 911, and for the police and emergency medical services to take students to the hospital only when it’s medically necessary….