This week, the New York Times published a disturbing investigative report about police use of force in Texas schools.

The newspaper went through thousands of incidents where school-based police departments had employed “heavy-handed” tactics – violent physical takedowns, chemical irritants, and electric tasers – and found many that were in response to minor misbehaviors, often stemming from things such as dress code violations, student beefs, and not showing respect for elders and authority.

Multiple studies spanning the last decade often found that while police presence in schools correlates with a reduction in some crimes, there is also a marked increase in harsher punishments, many of them disproportionately meted out to minority students. Cases that would have been handled aptly in a principal’s office have a much greater chance of winding up in a court of law.

The........

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