Police, School Officials Make Case For Cops In Evanston Schools

EVANSTON, IL — The third in Mayor Steve Hagerty's series of presentations on policing in Evanston focused on police in local public schools and at Northwestern University.

Monday's event featured the chiefs of Evanston's and Northwestern's police forces, school resource officers assigned to Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and Evanston Township High School District 202, the superintendent of District 65 and the principal of ETHS.

Recent nationwide debates over police powers, procedures and payrolls have been mirrored at local school board meetings and among the private university's student body, although officials in the elementary school district have worked to amend policies about officers in school for more than a year following a March 2019 incident where staff called police on a 6-year-old boy.

As with the previous editions of Hagerty's "Q&A" series on policing, some questions were attributed to community members, while other inquiries — "How much is time of the essence in responding to some of these situations?" or "threats that would be called in against the school ... I presume that type of stuff occurs and that's a type of incident where you would get right on the phone with the resource officers, is that correct?" — appeared to have originated with the mayor himself.

Evanston Township High School

Principal Marcus Campbell endorsed the school resource officer, or SRO, program at his 3,800-student school, which he said also employs 31 mental health professionals and several dozen security guards. The city currently picks up 100 percent of approximately $550,000 in budgeted costs for four officers assigned to local public schools.

"ETHS does not use SROs for student behavior issues," Campbell said, specifying that the dean and security guards handle routine discipline. "When there is engagement with our school resource officers, it's usually around preventions and interventions that we have in place. It's not a punitive system, but more, 'How do we get students connected with resources in the community?' 'How do we get them connected to resources here at ETHS?'"

Campbell was asked why the rest of the school's staff can't connect students with the same resources.

"There are some things that are simply police matters that I would not want to expose or put in jeopardy any staff member," Campbell said. "We need trained professionals who know how to deal with certain types of ideations, if you will — and if there are weapons involved, I certainly would not want to risk the lives of our mental health professionals. There are people trained to handle these types of situations, and that's what we really rely on the SROs for."

In response to the question of whether having police assigned to school buildings is better than summoning them when needed, Campbell suggested there might be more calls for service without dedicated school resource officers.

"I'd much rather having someone who's in the school, knows the kids, knows the situation — maybe even avoid calling 911 because we wouldn't have to do that," Campbell said. "You want to have a rapid response with someone who is familiar with the students and might be familiar with the situation."

The principal also praised the school's more than 40 school safety officers, who are responsible for patrolling the parking lots and hallways.

"Our safety management staff have some of the most positive relationships with our students," Campbell said. "Even if they're doing a really tough job in some cases, providing interventions and preventions and preventing lots of student conflict."

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed last year named Campbell as a defendant— along with Superintendent Eric Witherspoon, the District 202 school board and a pair of former school safety officers — in connection with the district's handling of allegations of abuse by two ex-security guards. One of the staffers named in the suit was charged with criminal sexual assault by a person in authority. When originally filed in August 2019, the complaint also named the city of Evanston and up to four unidentified school resource officers as defendants. They were not included in the amended complaint filed in December 2019.

The school district denies the allegations and is seeking to dismiss the complaint. Attorney Molly Thompson, of the Chicago law firm Dykema Gossett, argued in June that the lawsuit fails to show that Campbell or Witherspoon turned a blind eye to abuse or were deliberately indifferent to a pattern of misconduct by security guards under the nose of school resource officers. Thompson also said the suit lacked any facts supporting the claim that school administrators intended to discriminate against female students because of their gender, and even if one of them failed to follow established school policies or procedures, they are protected by qualified immunity — the legal doctrine that prevents most public officials from being held personally liable for discretionary decisions.

Northwestern University

Hagerty said he has emphasized the safety of students when he has spoken to Northwestern's roughly 2,000 incoming undergraduates and their families every year since becoming mayor in 2017.

"To all of those parents who are sending their 18-year-old off to Evanston, Illinois, they want to know that their child is safe," Hagerty said. "So the collaboration [between the Evanston Police Department and the Northwestern Police Department] is critical."

The city does not cover the cost of the university's police force, and it does receive some reimbursements when Evanston cops cover security for school functions, like sporting events.

"Evanston honestly relies on Northwestern University public safety to help keep the university campus safe and, by extension, our city safe," Hagerty said.

Bruce Lewis, a senior associate vice president at Northwestern and the chief of its private police force, explained that the jurisdiction of the department extends from Isabella Street in the north to Lake Street in the South, and from Lake Michigan to Asbury Avenue or Green Bay Road in the west. University police can cite or arrest anyone, regardless of their affiliation with the university, within that area, he said.

"In the neighborhood, we support Evanston Police Department on party calls, disruptions, things of that sort. We certainly support Evanston police in that way," Lewis said. "Oftentimes there's an opportunity not to take law enforcement actions but, in a restorative justice perspective, make a referral to the dean of students. We certainly do that."

Lewis said his department had 45 sworn officers and 30 community service officers. He brought up a March 2018 incident where a hoax report of a gunman in a vacant dorm room— a so-called "swatting incident" — locked down parts of the campus for a couple hours and triggered a heavily armed joint response by campus and city cops. And he praised the cooperative efforts by both departments to jointly receive federal grant money to establish body camera programs.

"As we consider where we are today, there's certainly opportunity," Lewis said, "to rexamine, to reimagine policing in today's age in ways that can better inform and be more transparent with our community."

Campus police at private universities in Illinois are governed by the Private College Campus Police Act. State law gives its officers the same powers as sheriffs or municipal peace officers, other than serving civil court paperwork, but it does not subject them to the same transparency requirements.

That means that if someone gets arrested by an Evanston police officer, the report and body camera footage — or any complaint that person might have filed about it — become public record. But if a university officer carries out the same arrest, the records are not subject to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

A 2015 bill to amend the Private College Campus Police Act and apply the FOIA to campus cops passed the Illinois House unanimously but never got a vote in the state senate, where it was sponsored by now-Attorney General Kwame Raoul. As a senator, Raoul represented Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, where the University of Chicago Police Department has jurisdiction over about 60,000 non-students.

Citing its exemption from the state's transparency law, Northwestern representatives have declined to provide the campus police force's basic policies, procedures and directives. When campus police arrested a freshman accused of sexually assaulting another student in March 2019, university officials declined to even disclose his name. And university officials declined to disclose whether a criminal investigation had been opened, or even what law enforcement agencies were involved, in response to a report of child pornography broadcast during an online symposium in May.

District 65

Following a series of meetings last year, District 65 officials have drafted a new set of policies and procedures for handling student safety and emergency response.

Officers will be assigned to protecting the perimeter of school buildings rather than inside. They will still perform the same safety training and preparedness planning services.

Mario Miller, a District 65 school resource officer who spent four years as a teacher in Chicago Public Schools before starting his law enforcement career two decades ago, said his role has evolved over the past few years to consist of more bonding.

"Sometimes you might have a family that might have all negative interactions with the police, no matter what the situation may be," Miller said. "We try to create that environment where our students understand that at least there's one officer or somebody that looks like them that can affect them in a manner where it's a positive interaction."

Earlier:
Amid Calls To 'Defund Police,' Evanston Mayor, Chief Talk Budget
Evanston Police Chief Defends Use Of 'Force Science' Training
ETHS Security Guards 'Sexually Groomed' Students: Suit
Man Charged With Rape At Northwestern Violates Bond, Stays Free

Watch full July 20 discussion on policing in Evanston »