Dive Brief:

• U.S. District Court Judge Abdul Kallon is listening to testimony on the use of pepper spray in Birmingham, AL, schools in a trial entering its third week Monday.
• The lawsuit in question was filed in 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center and is centered on the fact that School Resource Officers (police) stationed at Birmingham high schools have been using pepper spray to break up fights and subdue unruly students.
• The lawsuit, which was filed against six Birmingham SROs and Police Chief A.C. Roper, argues that the officers are quick to use the pepper spray, turning to the chemical weapon over other forms of mediation despite knowledge of its harmful effects.

Dive Insight:

The suit is aiming to have the use of pepper spray declared a violation of students' constitutional rights. In the midst of the second week of the trial, a high school in nearby Bessemer had an incident where an SRO officer broke up a fight with pepper spray. The attorney representing the police officers argues that this proves this tactic is more common beyond the city of Birmingham than the SPLC lawsuit implies.

Regardless of whether this is a common trend or not, the lawsuit is still important. Districts should be thinking about what kind of environment they want to create. Pepper spray aside, how do students feel when their campuses are monitored by police officers? Do they feel comfortable or resentful? After the Columbine High School massacre in the 1990s, there was an uptick in police presence on campuses, but in recent years, there has been a push to decrease the presence of police officers out of concern that it creates hostile environments on campuses.

The school-to-prison pipeline has garnered national attention in recent years, and the presence of school officers and police has only worked to buttress that system, according to the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is behind a current research project to understand the effects of police in schools.