215-400-SAFE Is A Joke

Jill Porter’s column in today’s Daily News describes how, just two days after a policy of allowing the teacher who was attacked to choose whether to press charges instead of the principal, the rules pretty much entirely changed. A tip hotline, 215-400-SAFE, for reporting violence also was instituted.

First, let’s go back to Wednesday’s Daily News:

And from now on, principals no longer decide whether a student - or parent - who harms or threatens a school employee is arrested, Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said.

If police are called to a school because a teacher or school worker has been assaulted, only the person making the complaint gets to say whether to press charges, Johnson said.

In the past, principals decided whether a student was arrested, the commissioner said.

Now, today’s column by Porter describes an incident yesterday at a Southwest Philly middle school:

A teacher at a Southwest Philadelphia middle school, for instance, called in late in the morning yesterday to report that a student had menaced her with his fists and threatened to “get her.” The teacher reported it to her principal. The principal called police.

But when the detective arrived, he declined to take the student into custody, explaining that Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson was trying only to “make people feel better” when he promised to arrest students, “but that’s not what we’re going to do.”

Now, I don’t know if a policy of arresting students is a bad idea. But what I do know is that saying you’re going to arrest students on Tuesday and then saying on Thursday the Police Commissioner was only trying to “make people feel better” is most certainly a bad idea.

Okay, so student not arrested, let’s move on, right? No. The district’s safe-schools advocate, Jack Stollsteimer, phoned Southwest Detectives to straighten things out after the incident. And, later, the student was arrested for threatening his teacher. So, basically, it appears Jack Stollsteimer is controlling who gets arrested now in schools. Hooray for progress!

Jill Porter | Teachers’ safety is on the line [Daily News]
A threat would bring a felony charge; principals no longer decide on arrests [Daily News]