I think it’s excellent the Chief is trying to do something about it. It is SO Bay Area that when somebody tries to do something critics pile on and list all the reasons it won’t work.

In the meantime I only wish he could do more. Like address the liquor stores located near schools that kids have to walk past. Anybody ever wonder why there r so many? There’s something terribly wrog with that.

Katy, please ask OPD if they’ve done any surveys to inventory liquor stores near schools and if they, OPD and the City can get grant funds to boost OPD ABAT and Nuiscance Dept support to get liquor stores AWAY from schools.

You guys are a joke! Thats why these growing thugs see the world the way they do. They know they can hurt and get over your types and will til Po-Po busts them and their heads!

This site is fun stuff now. Dont even make sense all that musch anymore. Find better ones that talk real stuff- I did.

Poor black and brown children who can read and write and function in school should be able to attend “good schools” free of bad students.

This is what’s missing in Urban Education. It used to be there. We need it back.

And when you say “should” not apply – are you talking about the real world or some imaginary wishful thinking world where the gangs don’t use adolescent males for murder.

Harlemmoon: You know, the reason all this is happening in the black schools is that we stopped trying to have “real” black schools sometime in the late 1960s and instead offered pacification “schools” where never is heard a discouraging word. If the black schools had the discipline they need, you wouldn’t be having these problems now. The troublemakers, black troublemakers, would be gone into reform schools and the black dulls would be gone into schools for the retarded.

That sounds cold – but there you have it. Dunbar High for those who toe the line, Preston or something else for those who don’t or can’t. Was that better or not? And it was still segregated by race I suppose..

Our problem is that when we integrated education we also decided we couldn’t discipline since that meant more blacks will always get disciplined more severely. So discipline went out the door alltogether, along with the Jewish kids (they used to be in OUSD!). To Piedmont/Orinda.

Society decided this way is more fun – at least more fun for the politicians and “educators”. So now things are at the point that (nearly all?) urban little black kids get pat searched and attended to by police officers. Because we won’t cull the herd.

Piedmont schools certainly will. Talk back over there a few times too many, cut class, and it’s continuation school.

You see the difference.

All because we wanted to make the chillun and their Mamas comfortable. Now we want to keep them (relatively) safe so in comes the cops and metal detectors.

Don’t even get me started about TSA. Same process of madness there.

Brave New World.

The discussion shouldn’t be about how many cops, how much they’re paid or in which schools they’re posted.

The real discussion, the heart of the matter, is Why?

When you have Peace Officers on the premises the rules change to their rules. Peace Officers cannot be required to take orders from a civilian. They will not be at the direction of any school administrator or teacher.

If OPD on campus begin to stop, detain, search or interview someone there will be no interference permitted. It’s not like the “Security” personnel at all. Peace Officers are not free to ignore certain things. If the school people don’t like it they need to leave the scene – they can’t butt in. And the Officers have no obligation to explain or justify their actions while engaged.

If X turns up at the school and Officers decide to detain & search them and/or their car they are not going to stop and chat about the decision with non officers. They may well know that X is searchable, they may have info that X carries weapons or drugs – or is wanted. And they are not going to hold a meeting to canvass the faculty about it. And if they have to take Ms X in they often cannot discuss why Ms/Mr X has to be quickly removed to interrogation. This is not an unlikely thing to happen. X may be a family member of staff or student, or even staff. It happens, full time staffing of OPD on a campus increases the odds tremendously. We see this at the Jr. Colleges – usually people there are mature enough to know they couldn’t know the whole story and don’t really get emotional because somebody else is in some trouble.

Here we are talking of a school full of adolescents. It takes very little to stir them up and goad them into acting out. Some busybody may want to start a petition/demonstration/walk out about X’s search and seizure (I have warned before about foolish people fighting the battles of others).

This is going to take some getting used to. It might even require reality adjustment on the part of a lot of people, students, family members & staff.

If that is what this plan actually leads to I hope Katy reports it in the Tribune. I see no reason to think this Police Chief would have his staff doing something politically incorrect. I believe they will be careful and correct in their operation and will have thought ahead with protocols to protect themselves from foreseeable avoidable criticism.

I rather think the Police presence in the middle school will boil down to unformed show of force to discourage dangerous adults from turning up at school and acting out (protection), report takers for the child molest, child abuse and child neglect cases more likely to occur at underclass schools, and (effectively) social workers to attend to the special needs of ghetto youth – interaction with male authority figures.

And if the Feds are paying for it, better Oakland Unified gets the service than some district in Texas.

This is probably not a bad thing, just a sign of the times. But you can see, it is not needed in Piedmont.

Brave New World.