– In North Carolina, the United States District Court rejected the Title VI claim of a parent that racial discrimination was the motivation behind a search of her vehicle, which her daughter parked in the school lot. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in schools that receive federal educational funds. The court dismissed the lawsuit because the school used a canine to conduct random sniffs of a row of cars in the parking lot. The animal, trained to detect the odors of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin, alerted on parent’s car. The car was searched over the objection of the parent, who was called to the campus. The court held that the parent, “failed, after having been afforded full discovery, to produce any evidence of discrimination, and her own naked opinion, without more, is not enough to establish a prima facie case of discrimination.” The court also held that, “the evidence is that the car was flagged after a random dog sniff in the student parking lot…(the dog) did not know who the car belonged to.” Humphries v. Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education
— In Arizona, the Phoenix Union High School District’s safety committee recommended bringing back school resource officers at its schools. “The committee also passed a potential intergovernmental agreement between Phoenix PD and the district that provides guidelines, including that officers should not participate in school discipline and confirming the authority of the schools in hiring, training, and supervising the officers.”
— In Colorado, the school safety program in the Thompson School District is finding success in sending mental health clinicians to campus calls with police officers. So far, the partnering of a school resource officer with a mental health clinician to calls has occurred in “nearly 150 calls involving students in crisis or with mental health needs… Once people start to understand what our role is in the district and how we can be utilized, our calls have started to pick up. We went from averaging two to three calls a day and now we’re upwards of five contacts in a day between the two of us…We’re not writing tickets…We’re not taking students to jail. We are getting them connected with services on the spot.”
— In Colorado, the City of Denver will pay for police officers returning to schools. The Denver Police Department has agreed to provide school resource officers to the schools. The school resource officers were phased out beginning in 2020. Violence in the schools is making a priority the return of police to campuses.