“Divesting in police is investing in black lives,” St. Paul School Board Director Chauntyll Allen declared as the district voted not to renew its contract with the St. Paul Police Department.
It was 2020 and the heyday of the Black Lives Matter race riots over the drug overdose death of violent career criminal George Floyd. Police defunding fever was running high in the Twin Cities.
A Somali Muslim student with the last name Omar claimed that police officers had “brutalized multiple Muslim girls” and attacked their hijabs. After the vote, Omar claimed that removing police officers “means better safety and less trauma for black and brown kids”.
Another student named Muhammad promised that “removing police from schools is an important step toward true safety.”
Three years later true safety has been officially achieved.
A St. Paul Public Schools survey found that 55% of high school staff feel unsafe at work. 71% of staffers had seen physical violence in school and 40% were worried about weapons in schools.
The two most popular requests made by the terrified school staffers are to get serious about punishing violent students and to bring in police officers to restore safety and security.
The Black Lives Matter campaign to “save black lives” by keeping police officers out of school led to the stabbing death of Devin Scott: a 15-year-old black teenage boy by a 16-year-old black teenager in a high school hallway. Scott’s memorial service was commemorated by a drive-by shooting in which passengers in a white car opened fire and shot three teens at the service.
The youngest victim of that shooting was 14-years-old. Police stopped a 16-year-old with a gun but aren’t sure if he was one of the shooters or one of those being shot at. Earlier another 16-year-old had been shot in the head across the street from St. Paul’s Central High School.
“This incident, that Devin Scott was killed in, he would not have been killed if a police officer was present to intervene rather than school staff,” Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said.
“I agree with him,” Anthony Scott, Devin’s uncle, said.
St. Paul schools had replaced school resource officers, who were police, with school support liaisons who were supposed to “build relationships with students”. The social workers proved to be useless when protecting staff or stopping a teenage boy from being stabbed to death.
“There is a level of support that is required from time to time that we’re just not equipped to do as a school staff,” Superintendent Joe Gothard warned. Without the police, the staff have to call the cops to stop an attack and wait for them to arrive. “Seconds and minutes really do add up.”
The cops have now been stationed outside schools, because the BLMers don’t want them inside, but parents and students are demanding that the cops come in from the cold.
Valeria Barrios-Sanchez, a student who saw Devin murdered, asked for the police to come back. “I am a senior, and this is supposed to be my most memorable year. It will be. Unfortunately, I have to remember it as the year I witnessed a homicide,” she told board members. “I implore the board to make a decision to help the future generations at Harding.”
“If we don’t address school safety, we will continue to victimize our most vulnerable population, which are young black men. They are the ones being shot and stabbed. For sure there is a school to prison pipeline. But there is also a school to hospital to morgue pipeline,” a former parent and track coach warned.
Ali Alowonle, an Asian “Liberatory Educator”, a teacher and DEI activist whose pronouns are “they/she”, however ranted that the district needed to divest from police and focus on “restorative practices, ethnic studies curriculum and instruction, reimagining family.”
If only an ethnic studies curriculum had been there when Devin was stabbed.
“Folks have been dying to get Police back in the buildings to monitor our black children,” Chauntyll Allen fumed. A school resource officer, according to her, “is still a killer cop.”
But it wasn’t a cop that killed Devin, but one of the beneficiaries of St. Paul’s embrace of Black Lives Matter and its pro-crime policies. A cop didn’t kill Devin, Chauntyll Allen’s policies did.
When the St. Paul board voted 5-1 to remove cops from schools, they also voted 5-1 to kill Devin and to let gang members and teenage drug dealers terrorize their employees.
What’s happening in St. Paul schools reflects the larger crisis over police defunding and rising crime that has wrecked the Twin Cities.
In 2021, St. Paul set a new record for murders and increased again in 2022. Pro-crime policies like police defunding and crime legalization, along with support for Black Lives Matter, has led to murders of mostly black people. High schools are at the bleeding edge of the crime wave.
Pro-crime policies have cost lives in and out of the schools. And yet the Left has not given up claiming that violent crime is a problem that can be solved with ethnic studies and a whole range of buzzwords. When police were pulled out of schools, activists claimed that would make black students safer. The students aren’t safe, neither are the workers, nor is anyone else.
A Somali Muslim student with the last name Omar claimed that police officers had “brutalized multiple Muslim girls” and attacked their hijabs. After the vote, Omar claimed that removing police officers “means better safety and less trauma for black and brown kids”.
Another student named Muhammad promised that “removing police from schools is an important step toward true safety.”
Three years later true safety has been officially achieved.
A St. Paul Public Schools survey found that 55% of high school staff feel unsafe at work. 71% of staffers had seen physical violence in school and 40% were worried about weapons in schools.
The two most popular requests made by the terrified school staffers are to get serious about punishing violent students and to bring in police officers to restore safety and security.
The Black Lives Matter campaign to “save black lives” by keeping police officers out of school led to the stabbing death of Devin Scott: a 15-year-old black teenage boy by a 16-year-old black teenager in a high school hallway. Scott’s memorial service was commemorated by a drive-by shooting in which passengers in a white car opened fire and shot three teens at the service.
The youngest victim of that shooting was 14-years-old. Police stopped a 16-year-old with a gun but aren’t sure if he was one of the shooters or one of those being shot at. Earlier another 16-year-old had been shot in the head across the street from St. Paul’s Central High School.
“This incident, that Devin Scott was killed in, he would not have been killed if a police officer was present to intervene rather than school staff,” Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said.
“I agree with him,” Anthony Scott, Devin’s uncle, said.
St. Paul schools had replaced school resource officers, who were police, with school support liaisons who were supposed to “build relationships with students”. The social workers proved to be useless when protecting staff or stopping a teenage boy from being stabbed to death.
“There is a level of support that is required from time to time that we’re just not equipped to do as a school staff,” Superintendent Joe Gothard warned. Without the police, the staff have to call the cops to stop an attack and wait for them to arrive. “Seconds and minutes really do add up.”
The cops have now been stationed outside schools, because the BLMers don’t want them inside, but parents and students are demanding that the cops come in from the cold.
Valeria Barrios-Sanchez, a student who saw Devin murdered, asked for the police to come back. “I am a senior, and this is supposed to be my most memorable year. It will be. Unfortunately, I have to remember it as the year I witnessed a homicide,” she told board members. “I implore the board to make a decision to help the future generations at Harding.”
“If we don’t address school safety, we will continue to victimize our most vulnerable population, which are young black men. They are the ones being shot and stabbed. For sure there is a school to prison pipeline. But there is also a school to hospital to morgue pipeline,” a former parent and track coach warned.
Ali Alowonle, an Asian “Liberatory Educator”, a teacher and DEI activist whose pronouns are “they/she”, however ranted that the district needed to divest from police and focus on “restorative practices, ethnic studies curriculum and instruction, reimagining family.”
If only an ethnic studies curriculum had been there when Devin was stabbed.
“Folks have been dying to get Police back in the buildings to monitor our black children,” Chauntyll Allen fumed. A school resource officer, according to her, “is still a killer cop.”
But it wasn’t a cop that killed Devin, but one of the beneficiaries of St. Paul’s embrace of Black Lives Matter and its pro-crime policies. A cop didn’t kill Devin, Chauntyll Allen’s policies did.
When the St. Paul board voted 5-1 to remove cops from schools, they also voted 5-1 to kill Devin and to let gang members and teenage drug dealers terrorize their employees.
What’s happening in St. Paul schools reflects the larger crisis over police defunding and rising crime that has wrecked the Twin Cities.
In 2021, St. Paul set a new record for murders and increased again in 2022. Pro-crime policies like police defunding and crime legalization, along with support for Black Lives Matter, has led to murders of mostly black people. High schools are at the bleeding edge of the crime wave.
Pro-crime policies have cost lives in and out of the schools. And yet the Left has not given up claiming that violent crime is a problem that can be solved with ethnic studies and a whole range of buzzwords. When police were pulled out of schools, activists claimed that would make black students safer. The students aren’t safe, neither are the workers, nor is anyone else.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
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Comments
If you were a cop in one of these schools coming across a situation where you would be forced to use deadly force, would you? In today's atmosphere, I would walk away, rather than be crucified.
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