Broward County Needs Another Rule Change: Stat

Another Obama-Based Tragedy From the DOJ's Phony Statistics Desk

In 2013, the Broward County School Board, the Teachers Union, the NAACP, law enforcement, politicians and the Diversity Board entered a Holder/Lynch-style agreement to change the rules about school arrests due to concerns over disparate impact on minorities.

The New York Times did the cheerleading:

"FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Faced with mounting evidence that get-tough policies in schools are leading to arrest records, low academic achievement and high dropout rates that especially affect minority students, cities and school districts around the country are rethinking their approach to minor offenses.

Perhaps nowhere has the shift been more pronounced than in Broward County’s public schools. Two years ago, the school district achieved an ignominious Florida record: More students were arrested on school campuses here than in any other state district, the vast majority for misdemeanors like possessing marijuana or spraying graffiti.

The Florida district, the sixth largest in the nation, was far from an outlier. In the past two decades, schools around the country have seen suspensions, expulsions and arrests for minor nonviolent offenses climb together with the number of police officers stationed at schools. The policy, called zero tolerance, first grew out of the war on drugs in the 1990s and became more aggressive in the wake of school shootings like the one at Columbine High School in Colorado.

But in November, Broward veered in a different direction, joining other large school districts, including Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago and Denver, in backing away from the get-tough approach.

Rather than push children out of school, districts like Broward are now doing the opposite: choosing to keep lawbreaking students in school, away from trouble on the streets, and offering them counseling and other assistance aimed at changing behavior.

These alternative efforts are increasingly supported, sometimes even led, by state juvenile justice directors, judges and police officers.

In Broward, which had more than 1,000 arrests in the 2011 school year, the school district entered into a wide-ranging agreement last month with local law enforcement, the juvenile justice department and civil rights groups like the N.A.A.C.P. to overhaul its disciplinary policies and de-emphasize punishment. ...

Pressure to change has come from the Obama administration, too. Beginning in 2009, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education aggressively began to encourage schools to think twice before arresting and pushing children out of school. In some cases, as in Meridian, Miss., the federal government has sued to force change in schools.

 Some view the shift as politically driven and worry that the pendulum may swing too far in the other direction. Ken Trump, a school security consultant, said that while existing policies are at times misused by school staffs and officers, the policies mostly work well, offering schools the right amount of discretion.

“It’s a political movement by civil rights organizations that have targeted school police,” Mr. Trump said. “If you politicize this on either side, it’s not going to help on the front lines.”

Supporters, though, emphasize the flexibility in these new policies and stress that they do not apply to students who commit felonies or pose a danger. ...

In Broward County, the shift has shown immediate results, although it is too early to predict overall success.".......

They removed "threats" from the list of arrestable offenses. Here is the PDF agreement.

Somebody needs to ask this sheriff if his office still supports that rule change. I can understand taking graffiti vandals or pot-smokers off the list--but threats of violence at school should have never been removed. "If you see something, say something" was in effect pre-emptively banned for race-based political correctness.

Had Cruz been arrested for threats or fighting or bringing bullets on campus, he might have been prohibited from buying weapons. Not to mention the two three dozen calls made to local law enforcement for domestic disturbances. An arrest also might have shown up when the FBI went not looking for "nikolas cruz professional school shooter".

In fairness to the FBI, they were pretty busy picking our president for us. That's what happens when the Perma-Blob knows they cannot be fired. They do what they shouldn't while failing to do what they should.

Forget the Left's bogus reading of racial stats--they shouldn't drive fundamental public safety concerns here. It is an article of religious faith with them that all groups misbehave in exact proportion to their numbers--and any disparities are therefore because The Man is biased. It's pure fantasy, but that's their religion.

We need a system so the State of Florida can keep a mentally-ill Nikolas Cruz from getting a gun instead of the system we have: the one where the Deep State decides for us that Donald Trump isn't mentally-fit to obtain the presidency.

But this was a local policy failure, too. Broward County needs to revisit this. Yesterday.

Brandishing a weapon. Suicide attempts live on snapchat. 39 visits from police.
No arrests. Why?