This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/the-gall-and-the-temerity-of-mps-motivates-judge-to-order-cops-in-schools/

Badger Institute reporting on crime-ridden schools goes back years

A Milwaukee County judge lambasted the Milwaukee School Board in a rare broadside this week aimed at finally getting cops back in MPS high schools that for years have been overrun with trouble that led to police calls.

“The gall and the temerity of, again, primarily the school board, but to the lesser degree, the city is breathtaking,” Judge David Borowski said Monday in ordering an end to the saga.

Twenty months after legislators reached a deal with Milwaukee leaders on the issue, Borowski ordered the district and the city to split the cost evenly and have 25 police on duty by Feb. 27 or be held in contempt of court.

The Milwaukee Public Schools Board of Directors pulled officers out of schools in 2016 after parents and activists complained that police too often arrested and ticketed students rather than allowing the schools to discipline them.

In the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, the school board then voted unanimously in June 2020 to dissolve its contract for resource officers outside of school buildings as well.

The deal with legislators gave MPS a deadline of Jan. 1, 2024, to reinstate policing. After the district repeatedly failed to do so, a Milwaukee mother, Charlene Abughrin, in October sued with the help of the public interest legal firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. It was her case that landed the district and the city before Borowski.

The Legislature’s action in 2023 came after the Badger Institute reported in 2022 that Milwaukee police were in MPS schools anyhow — responding to 1,310 calls for service at 34 MPS-controlled high schools in the 2021-’22 school year, an average of 7.2 calls every school day.

Marshall High School saw 140 calls for police, the most of any of MPS’ high schools, but hardly the only troubled building: Washington, Madison and Riverside University high schools saw 91, 90 and 89 police calls, respectively.

The most frequent reason for calls was “trouble with juvenile,” but there were more than 100 calls for “battery,” 39 for sexual assault, and 15 because of gunfire. A chapter in our Mandate for Madison in 2022 called for the return of police.

By February 2023, numbers for police calls to MPS high schools in just the fall semester were higher than comparable figures from the previous school year: 778 calls for police service, 21.2% more than the 642 calls in the spring semester, and 16.5% more than the 668 made in the previous fall.

By May 2023, majority Republicans in the state Assembly proposed a bill that would require the city to return police to its public schools in exchange for more sales tax leeway for the county and city. “It’s my understanding the mayor wanted those resource officers back,” state Rep. Bob Donovan, a former Milwaukee alderman, told the Badger Institute.

The district missed its Jan. 1, 2024 deadline, however, and by summer, lawmakers were noticing. “I am disappointed, but I’m not surprised,” said Donovan, a Greenfield Republican, while state Sen. John Jagler, chair of the Senate Committee on Education, told the Badger Institute, “They are breaking the law and they don’t care.”

Borowski this week gave Milwaukee Public Schools 10 days to comply with state law and have police officers on duty in its trouble-plagued buildings.

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute.

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

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