Within the past four years, Richland County School Resource Officers (SRO) have been involved in the physical and sexual assault of young girls within schools. We do not need SROs reinforcing and normalizing violence and assault in our schools. 

Removing SROs is part of a larger demand to Defund the Police through the Black Lives Matter movement spreading across the United States. There was an SRO attack on a student at Spring Valley High School in 2015 that brought national attention to the problems with the presence of police in schools. SROs are not trained in child and adolescent development, so it's no surprise that many more incidents like the one at Spring Valley, have occurred. It is past time for Richland County School Districts to cut ties with School Resource Officers. We must end the harmful practice of staffing our schools with SROs.

The last thing schools need is bullies in blue to fast track the school to prison pipeline. We know from the latest stats released by Richland County, of the 343 students SROs arrested in schools 2018-2019, 90 percent were Black.

We demand that Richland County follow the lead of Minneapolis, MN, Portland, OR and other districts throughout the states and immediately end contracts with SROs to invest in our children's public safety and wellness through social workers, mental health counselors, and restorative justice practices in schools.