Arrested Over Fart Spray: Report Explores Police Presence In WA Schools

SEATTLE, WA - The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter in Washington this week released a report detailing how police in local schools turn "youthful misbehavior" into criminal offenses. The report takes a critical eye to police presence in schools, highlighting how students are arrested for offenses like deploying "fart spray" or dumping chocolate milk on someone's head. The report also looks at how much school policing costs, and the training officers receive.

The ACLU released "Students, Not Suspects: The Need to Reform School Policing in Washington," on Monday. The report looks at data on policing in public schools across Washington state, and asserts that police in schools can sometimes undermine education.

The report found that 84 out of the state's 100 largest school districts have officers assigned to patrol schools - yet only 25 schools require officers undergo special training to work with young people.

The report also uncovered an apparent racial bias in the way some schools are policed. In Edmonds, the only high school with an assigned officer, according to the report, is the one with the highest enrollment of minority and low-income students. In Seattle, the three middle schools with assigned police officers have rates of low-income and minority students nearly double the average of the entire district.

"Some of these districts may have reasons for the disparate placement of police officers in schools that are not facially discriminatory. Nevertheless, parents, students, and community members may receive troubling messages from the placement of police in predominantly low-income schools or schools with significant concentrations of students of color," the report says.

But a larger problem, the report found, is Washington's "disturbing school" law, which provides, "Any person who shall willfully create a disturbance on school premises during school hours or at school activities or school meetings shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, the penalty for which shall be a fine in any sum not more than fifty dollars." The ACLU claims that law gives police broad powers to arrest students perceived to be in violation of the law. About 800 students have been arrested under the "disturbing school" law over the past 20 years, the ACLU found.

And then there's that fart-spray incident - the student was initially arrested for felony assault.

"Caleb, a 15-year-old high school student in Asotin County, was charged with felony assault after he brought a bottle of fart spray to school. He sprayed the product in a hallway and the library at his school. The spray triggered breathing problems in another student. Caleb was charged with felony assault in the second degree and disturbing schools, and was arrested by the officer embedded in his high school. The charges were later reduced to a misdemeanor, and Caleb agreed to write a letter of apology and split the hospital bill of the student who had breathing problems," the report reads.

In the Puget Sound area, many schools have school resource officers. The officers have a variety of duties outside policing criminal activity, including providing security, traffic enforcement, and providing students with a positive police role model.

"The SROs are encouraged to develop rapport with students and staff, treating the school as a 'community' and using community oriented policing techniques to ensure school safety. As an added benefit, the officer is available, as is any on-duty officer, for law enforcement response in the event of urgent situations, which adds to general neighborhood safety," reads the description of the King County Sheriff Office's SRO program.

Local school resource officers have been lauded for work inside the schools. In 2012, Kent officer Scott Rankin was credited with saving a student's life at Kent-Merdian High School when he performed CPR on a student who went into cardiac arrest.

In February, King County Sheriff's Deputy Shaman Wicklund, a school resource officer in Woodinville, was honored as "deputy of the year." Wicklund got the award for a wide range of work in schools, including teaching hundreds of classes on criminal law and forensics. Wicklund also works in his off-hours as a wrestling coach.

You can read the ACLU's full report on police in Washington schools here.

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