Victoria officials heard an impassioned plea for the return of police school liaison officers this week.
The Victoria and Esquimalt Police Board met with B.C. human rights commissioner Kasari Govender on July 16 to discuss the program, which has become a controversial topic since the Greater Victoria School District (SD61) ended it in June 2023.
The decision was made after Govender recommended it, after a 2022 study in the United States found school officers made marginalized students feel less safe. Govender said at the time the programs should be ended unless school districts can demonstrate an evidence-based need.
Mia Golden, a counsellor for the Mobile Youth Service Team (MYST) who works with police departments around the Capital Region, said Lower Mainland-based gangs are actively grooming SD61 students in high schools, middle schools and elementary schools because gang members know that the school district has no school liaison officers. She also mentioned a rise in sexual violence in schools which Golden attributed to what youths are seeing online.
According to Golden, students have experienced sexual coercion in and out of schools, and she has had multiple calls from parents saying kids are to scared to go into school bathrooms because of the "fear of what might take place."
She said the "narrative" that people of colour in B.C. are targeted by police, that they don't trust police, and that they are triggered by police, can be more harmful to people of colour by keeping them in the "victim role and mindset" and it halters attempts to bridge relationships between people of colour and police.
According to an Argyle survey done in Vancouver, which surveyed 1,900 people in 2021, students who identified as being people of colour expressed negative feelings and experiences with the school liaison program, pointing to negative personal experiences and broader concerns about the program’s ties to policing. This survey was brought up during the Tuesday meeting.
"A few students mentioned experiencing or witnessing acts of racism or discrimination at the hands of SLOs, which was tied to a desire to change the program and/or remove officers from schools. A few students expressed strong discomfort with having police in schools at all, with some mentioning negative associations with the police related to factors such as race, gender identity, sexuality, immigration status, and geographic area," noted the study.
At the meeting, Govender mentioned a 2021 report from the Office of the Human Right Commissioner called Equity is Safer, in which they found that black people in Vancouver are 5.3 times more likely to be arrested than their presence in the population would predict, and Indigenous people are 17 times more likely to be arrested in Vancouver.
"They also are over-represented in proactive policing practices, not just responsive policing practices, demonstrating the role of bias and stereotyping in these disproportionate numbers that are showing up in the research," said Govender.
Police, politicians and SLO advocates have argued that a study done in the U.S. is not a reflection on Canada and Canadian policing, and there has not been any Canadian studies directly linked to how students are effected by school liaison officers.
Govender said she has tried to go through the B.C. government to have a study done but they declined. She hoped that the board would also advocate to the province to have a study done to explore relationships between SLO's and students.
Board member Paul Faoro told Govender "you asked for data, you asked for facts, you just had a half-an-hour presentation [from Golden] telling you over and over what is happening in the schools. I think we have the facts, and what I heard is students are not safe in this school district."
Neither Golden or any board members presented any science-backed facts or data regarding school liaison officers throughout the meeting.
"Police are particularly well placed to know that the conversation in community and fears in community don't always match crime-rates," said Govender. "In fact over the last number of decades fears around violent crime have far out-stripped the rates of violent crime, as violent crime has gone down, fears have gone up."
Golden said having more counsellors than school officers is a problem because the mandate of counsellors is "scheduling, career goals, basic check-ins, but it is not counselling, as people often think it is."
According to Work B.C., among the duties of educational counsellors includes helping students with personal matters such as substance use, depression, eating disorders, gender, sexuality, self-esteem, family and relationships, and "educational counsellors may deal with complex and stressful situations. They work with vulnerable children and youth experiencing mental health problems and other issues."
Barbara Desjardins, the board's lead co-chair said the board has not had any discussions "on any steps as a result of the presentations."
