Lawmakers Push To End School Resource Officer Program In New Bill

ROCKVILLE, MD — Two Montgomery County lawmakers are seeking to remove police officers from public schools with a new bill introduced Tuesday.

Bill 46-20 — introduced by Democratic councilmembers Will Jawando and Hans Riemer — would prohibit the Montgomery County Police Department from deploying school resource officers (SROs) in school buildings.

The county's SRO program was established in September 2002, through a federal grant created in the wake of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. Today, there are officers employed at every high school — and several middle schools — in Montgomery County.

Ending the program, according to Jawando, would help address disparities in discipline for Black and Latino students.

"This legislation ending the School Resource Officer program is an important step towards reducing the disparate impact of policing in our schools," he said. "Students of color fare worse than their white peers across the board in school discipline policies, and particularly when it comes to arrests and their resulting interactions with the criminal justice system."

Statewide data show that nearly half of the 12,006 student arrests made during the 2015-2019 school years were of Black children.

According to the County Council's staff report for the bill, Black students are 275 percent more likely to be arrested in school than their White counterparts. For Latino students, they are 86 percent more likely to be arrested than their White peers.

During Tuesday's council meeting, Riemer said the county should remove police officers from public schools, but acknowledged that there may be times when law enforcement personnel need to be called upon and intervene.

"I really think we need to take a different approach and find an alternative way to address incidents," Riemer said. "I recognize that there are, at times, serious incidents that may require a police officer to come to the school — (like) if there is a serious, violent incident or a serious threat. But as a general matter, I just don't believe that we need to rely upon officers making arrests."

The lawmakers said the goal isn't to fire school resource officers, but to move them to other unfilled positions within the Montgomery County Police Department. By eliminating the program, they said the county would save $3 million.

Jawando and Riemer suggest using the funds allocated for school resource officers to provide mental health services, restorative justice training for MCPS educators and staff, and other student support services.

A public hearing for the bill is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 12 at 7:30 p.m.