Yesterday the Los Angeles School Police Department unveiled protocols intended to reduce the number of daytime curfew tickets written to students. The revised procedures are a result of collaboration and discussions between Public Counsel, the Community Rights Campaign, the ACLU of Southern California, Children’s Defense Fund, CADRE, and Youth Justice Coalition — groups that work to keep students in school — and Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) leaders.

“The Los Angeles School Police Department supports the educational mission of the school district and the Superintendent’s goals of attendance and graduation improvement and reducing the cycle of student ‘push out,’ ” said LASPD Chief Steven K. Zipperman, who issued the directive on Oct. 19. “With this directive, school police officers will be a stronger partner with principals, students, parents and teachers to keep students on track within the educational environment by reducing court appearances and increasing alternate attendance improvement program alternatives offered through a non-penal system or judicial environment.”

The directive puts an end to curfew “sweeps” without cause, where police ticketed students just outside or even on school grounds. It also reminds officers that merely violating curfew is not a reason to search, handcuff, or detain a student. And it charges officers to encourage students to get to campus rather than to ticket them.

School police and LAPD together enforce the City of Los Angeles' daytime curfew law, and the two police forces have now taken major steps to reduce curfew tickets. In April, the Los Angeles Police Department announced similar protocols in part in response to disturbing data showing that 88% of students in Los Angeles Unified School District who received curfew tickets were African American or Latino. Only 74% of LAUSD students are black or Latino.

According to LAPD and LASPD data requested by the groups, police issued more than 47,000 tickets from 2004 to 2009. Each curfew fine can cost more than $250 and require students and their families to miss additional time from school and work to go to court to resolve them.

“When you’re dealing with real-life issues dragging you down and making you late to school, the last thing you need when you get there is to run into police treating you like a criminal and making you feel like there’s no point to trying anymore,” said Nabil Romero, a recent graduate from Roybal Learning Complex in downtown L.A. who received a curfew ticket from L.A. School Police officers in spring 2011. “It’s good to see LASPD realize they need to support students instead of turning us back.”

The breakthrough rules come just a month after Los Angeles City Councilman Tony Cárdenas introduced a motion on September 16 to revise the city’s daytime curfew law, a law which has proved ineffective and has targeted students and their families who can least afford to pay.

There are dozens of reasons why students are late or truant, ranging from emotional and mental health problems, school environment, special education needs, economic pressures, substance abuse, physical or emotional abuse in the home, lack of adequate transportation, fear of being harmed at school, bullying, and more. Research shows that schools, not courts, are the best way to address the underlying problems that cause truancy.

"This directive puts students, parents and teachers, not courts and police, in charge of students’ education," said Manuel Criollo, Community Rights Campaign. “We thank Police Chief Zipperman for his leadership in helping students get to school and stay on track and the Los Angeles Unified School District for stepping up to focus on alternatives to criminalization.”

The revisions to the Los Angeles School Police Department procedures were adopted October 19 and, if fully implemented: • Stop unjustified ticket “task forces” and sweeps within the first 90 minutes of the start of school. • Stop ticketing on or near school grounds, where school authorities should be responsible for students. • Directs police to encourage students to get to school rather than ticketing them. • Reinforces the requirement that police must ask students if they have a legitimate excuse before writing them a ticket. • Requires a proactive quarterly monitoring process for the first year to review tickets and the ticketing process and to assess whether the policy is being implemented. • Makes clear that truancy task forces, also known in the community as truancy sweeps, should not be conducted arbitrarily and without a legitimate and substantiated reason.

ACLU-SC, the Community Rights Campaign, Public Counsel, CADRE, Youth Justice Coalition, and Children’s Defense Fund announced they would monitor the revised procedures to ensure that students are being protected.

In 1994, Lisa Simpson -- daughter of Homer, sister of Bart -- posed the question that continues to plague law enforcement: "If you're the police, who will police the police?"
Homer answered, "I dunno; Coast Guard?"
Amidst allegations of deputy-on-inmate abuse at LA County jails, LA County Sheriff Lee Baca's answer was inexplicably worse than Homer's: "We police ourselves."
There's a basic structural problem here that Baca doesn't see. Without an external and independent body overseeing the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, how can people be sure that it handles deputy misconduct properly? They can't. They simply have to trust the sheriff.
Of course, Baca can and does point to the Office of Independent Review (OIR), the civilian oversight group that reviews the investigations into the use of force that the Sheriff's Department is supposed to conduct. But despite its name, the OIR doesn't conduct an independent review. The quality of its investigation is dependent on the original Sheriff's Department investigations into use of force.
Those original investigations are flawed at best. A recent OIR report too often found that the Sheriff's Department investigations are "lackluster, sometimes slanted, and insufficiently thorough." It also noted that when deputies misrepresent their own actions or those of inmates, they can "get away" with abuse of inmates. Its preliminary review of our jails report suggested that more deputies are abusing inmates and getting away with it.
Because the OIR just reviews the Sheriff's Department's investigations, it can't improve on the original. Garbage in, garbage out.
The OIR didn't talk to Gordon Grbavac, who was brutally assaulted by deputies and forced to say on camera that he caused his own injuries.
And the OIR never interviewed volunteer jails tutor Scott Budnick, who saw so many disturbing incidents of deputy-on-inmate abuse that he stopped volunteering at Men's Central Jail. He reported the abuse, but the Sheriff's Department never interviewed him. Because the Sheriff's Department never interviewed Mr. Budnick, the OIR likely never even knew he was a witness to abuse.
Mr. Budnick's case isn't special -- to our knowledge the OIR has never questioned anyone the Sheriff's Department had omitted from its investigation.
Rather than reassure the public, Baca actually highlighted the lack of accountability. In light of our reportand extensive media coverage of the jails abuses, it's clear that the jails need drastically improved oversight. Angelenos deserve far better than "We police ourselves." We deserve to know that someone is assessing Sheriff's Department policy, training, leadership, supervision. We deserve to have someone police the police.