The History of Police in Chicago Schools

• In Event: Learning From Chicago's Decentralized, School-Based Decision Making Regarding the Role of Police in Schools

Abstract

Louis’ research focuses on the historical roots of police in Chicago’s schools. While the criminalization of Black and Latinx youth in Chicago began in earnest during the Progressive Era, policing often stopped at the schoolhouse gate. In the 1950s, the Chicago Teachers Union began to use incidents of youth violence in schools to call for police protection. When Black and Latinx students and parents began demanding desegregation, improved school curriculum, and the hiring of Black and Latinx teachers and administrators in the 1960s, Chicago Public Schools began its formal relationship with the Chicago Police Department. Off duty police were hired as guards and asked by principals to wear their uniforms and service weapons. As neighborhood and school demographics shifted rapidly, the size of the police presence grew apace, with the security force numbering over 500 off duty officers in 1972. Black and Latinx students became targets for arrest and expulsion from the schools as the Drug War era emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1991, Richard M. Daley used his tough-on-crime policies to require the presence of two uniformed police officers in each high school. Many experts will point to the 1994 Crime Bill or the effects of the Columbine school massacre to explain the presence of police in schools today. Yet, a review of the history of Chicago’s relationship between police and schools shows that for Black and Latinx students, police have been in schools for over half a century.

Author

• Louis Mercer, University of Illinois at Chicago
  Presenting Author