Illinois Cops Are Hitting Students With Hefty Fines For Breaking School Rules
from the beating-up-parents-for-their-kids'-lunch-money dept
Putting cops in schools is a terrible idea. It tends to encourage school administrators to abdicate their disciplinary duties and allow cops to decide which school policy violations should be treated as criminal acts.
Turns out it’s also a bad idea to have compliant cops adjacent to schools. A new report from ProPublica, sourced from hundreds of public records requests, shows schools have found a new way to punish students that not only bypasses state law, but allows administrators to offload discipline to entities whose entire kink is punishing people.
Across Illinois, police are ticketing thousands of students a year for in-school adolescent behavior once handled only by the principal’s office — for littering, for making loud noises, for using offensive words or gestures, for breaking a soap dish in the bathroom.
Ticketing students violates the intent of an Illinois law that prohibits schools from fining students as a form of discipline. Instead of issuing fines directly, school officials refer students to police, who then ticket them for municipal ordinance violations, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica has found.
What are kids getting fined for? $200 for truancy. $175 for being caught with a vape pen. $250 for shoving someone in the cafeteria. State law supposedly forbids schools from notifying law enforcement about truant students, but the records show schools are ignoring this.
On top of those fines there are court and other administrative fees tacked on, adding up to $150 to the total. Many of those fined have to skip school to attend meetings with prosecutors or other law enforcement reps. And when families fail to pay the trumped-up totals, the government sends this off to collection agencies, allowing this disciplinary offshoring to damage parents’ credit ratings.
Unsurprisingly, no one tracks the ticketing of school children — not in Illinois or anywhere else in the nation. ProPublica (working with the Chicago Tribune) has performed the job the government (at large) is uninterested in doing. Utilizing more than 500 public records requests, ProPublica has compiled a searchable database of fines issued by law enforcement on behalf of schools, providing the first bit of sunshine this unseemly practice has seen.
Schools and cops must be happy with this arrangement because it’s happening thousands of times a year.
In all, the investigation documented more than 11,800 tickets issued during the last three school years, even though the COVID-19 pandemic kept students out of school for much of that period and even though records show no students were ticketed in the state’s biggest district, the Chicago Public Schools.
The analysis of 199 districts, which together encompass more than 86% of the state’s high school students, found that ticketing occurred in at least 141. In some K-12 districts, tickets were issued to children as young as 8.
The entire report is well worth reading. It digs deep into the numbers and explains the origin of both the practice of ticketing students as well as the development of the law meant to the end this practice that many schools have figured out how to route around.
It also includes several small details that highlight how internally corrupt and self-serving this whole mess is. First, police and prosecutors directly benefit from ticketing students. Almost all money collected goes directly to these entities. None of it flows back to schools, which means the administrators who are exploiting the loophole in the law to fine students are either too lazy to perform their own discipline or simply harbor some desire to inflict as much misery as possible on students who misbehave.
Even the figureheads that oversee these quasi-judicial proceedings appear to intensely dislike the kids and parents they deal with. ProPublica attended several “hearings” handled by hearing officer Harry H. Semrow Jr., who seemed to take pleasure in criticizing parents for speaking up and ensuring a docket full of students with citations would eat up most of their school day.
“I don’t care,” Semrow said. “I get paid by the hour.”
Records show he gets paid $150 an hour.
And the proceedings he oversees in McHenry, Illinois suddenly got a whole lot less transparent once journalists attended hearings.
Even though the city code calls for it, McHenry also no longer records the proceedings, having abruptly stopped in December soon after reporters began attending. McHenry Deputy Police Chief Thomas Walsh said state law does not require a recording, and he and the police chief decided it “created an unnecessary record.”
Well, sure, unnecessary for him and the other beneficiaries of this system. But the timing is more than just suspect, it’s convicted.
The publication of this investigation has at least prompted the Illinois Superintendent of Education to ask the state’s schools to please stop exploiting the loophole in the law to fine kids for violating school policies.
In a strongly worded plea sent to officials across the state, Illinois State Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala said the costly fines associated with the tickets can be immensely harmful to families, and there’s no evidence they improve students’ behavior. School officials who refer students to police for ticketing have “abdicated their responsibility for student discipline to local law enforcement,” she wrote Thursday, the same day the investigation “The Price Kids Pay” was published.
That’s a good request but the loophole still exists. And if it exists, it will be exploited, no matter how well-worded the plea is. But it’s a start. And state legislators now know what needs to be fixed. Whether or not they’re able to sustain the desire to do so past the end of this news cycle remains to be seen.
Filed Under: fines, harry semrow, illinois, mchenry, police in schools, school resource officer, sro
Comments on “Illinois Cops Are Hitting Students With Hefty Fines For Breaking School Rules”
this will be codified
Look for this to become law in the “Back the blue for thee, but not for me” world we live in.
Three things.
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I don’t think it was a judge. I’m assuming that ‘Judge’ and ‘Hearing Officer’ are two different things.
This also would suggest that they may be targeting kids that appear to be from less affluent families since those families would not have the resources to take this to the actual courts.
American students are minors, and therefore have no rights. Anything their parents do not object to is A-OK. This is a natural result of laws that declare minors as being under the control of their parents or guardians.
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Except students have rights, as all citizens do, and their rights don’t disappear when they attend school. They are more limited than the rights afforded to adults, but they still have rights.
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I wasn’t saying I agree with the position that students have no rights, only pointing out how those rights can be made to disappear by law enforcement because (to give one example) a person under the age of eighteen in America cannot own any property, not even the clothes they’re standing up in nor the food on their plate. Such half-arsed laws only make children that much easier to abuse.
Re: Re: Re: Poe's law strikes
After I read your original comment I had to look at your name to check whether you were being sarcastic.
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False. Their rights may be more heavily restricted, especially in school, but they absolutely do still have rights.
Also false. Some things also require the child’s consent and/or can be done despite their parents’ objection, and in most cases where the parent is the deciding party on the child’s behalf, it requires active confirmation from the parent(s) for it to be okay.
Not really. Especially given the fact that there is absolutely no indication that parents who were aware of this practice either consented or failed to object to it.
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Oh, wow. You were super late to the party, weren’t you?
…which violates a law, not a “school rule”.
Possibly also illegal.
“Offensive” is a bullshit way to describe words or gestures: a weasel-word, because it attempts to frame a person’s own reaction as a property of the words themselves. Say “I’m offended” (or not), or shut the fuck up, rather than trying to predict the reactions of a hypothetical person.
It’s hard to see how this would survive any First Amendment defense anyway.
Once again, not a “school rule” but an actual tort. I suppose it’s technically valid to call the cops for any of these minor things, but a principal that can’t handle them is really not qualified for the job. Call the parents, have them pay for the cleanup or replacement, done.
(BTW… what kind of ancient public washroom still uses soap dishes? I’ve rarely, if ever, seen anything other than liquid or foam soap since the 1980s.)
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That’s why fine is so expensive. It was an antique.
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At least at my school, there was a rule against littering. It may also violate a law, but there’s nothing to indicate that the school rules didn’t also ban it.
Possible, but not terribly likely to be applicable in a school setting. Most noise ordinances regard things that can be heard by people not in the same building (if regarding indoor noises) or noises made outdoors, virtually always with amplification. I’m also pretty sure that a more restrictive ordinance than that would be unconstitutional.
I do think it probably violates a school rule, though.
I don’t agree entirely, nor do I even understand the relevance. I will say this is a fairly common school rule.
As a law? Agreed. As a school rule, though… Well, if it disrupts the class, it can be constitutional.
Again, in my schools, there was always a school rule against vandalism or damaging school property. It may also be (and likely is) a tort, but it’s still a school rule either way.
Agreed. The idea used to be that misbehavior by minors should be handled internally within the school and/or by the parent(s)/guardian(s) outside of very exceptional circumstances involving things far more serious than littering, loud noises, offensive language/gestures, or breaking a soap dish. Basically, they lack the knowledge, experience, and maturity needed to make informed decisions about right or wrong the same way adults can, so holding them to the same standards as adults would be unfair.
Fining minors heavily for minor infractions is simply not equitable and violates the spirit of making the distinction between minors and adults in this context and giving schools broad authority over children:
While I’ve not seen one in a public school, they are still used in public restrooms in a number of other places I’ve been to.
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Which is irrelevant because
Assylum Inmates
In many schools, administrators and teachers have virtually no power or disciplinary authority. Some students realize that they can get away with anything, and exhibit zero respect towards school employees. The kids don’t face any immediate consequences for misbehavior. Until someone regains the ability to mete out punishment, the last hope for control are the police.
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The answer to this isn’t “let the cops handle this”. No police officer should ever handle anything like vaping on school grounds or truancy—and especially not in a way that could worsen the lives of a kid’s family (by way of hefty fines). I mean, unless you want to see more videos of kids being handcuffed or slammed to the floor because they misbehaved in a classroom.
Cops should have to handle violent crimes on school grounds. They shouldn’t have to—or be allowed to—“handle” a kid swearing at a teacher.
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Well and good. But here, we have an example of the police being the FIRST “hope for control”.
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Oh, and what would you suggest? Three-hour detentions, writing lines, caning? I’ve got a much better idea: what about teaching students respect by showing them some in not calling the police over every minor infraction?
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I’m pretty sure that is exactly what Koby is suggesting, and he wouldn’t be the only one harkening for that golden age where every student problem could be disciplined away like magic.
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…that golden age where every student problem could be disciplined away like magic.
Well, of course they can. Everyone knows that the best way to deal with a student who’s paranoid is to show them they have everything to fear from authority figures. /s
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Where did you get this fact-free nonsense from? Do a really believe that teachers and schools lack authority to discipline students? Or is it that they lack authority to punish kids the way you think they should, like corporal punishment? Paddling is still shockingly legal in nearly 20 states, despite research being around for over 40 years that has concluded any sort of spanking or hitting of children causes permanent damage and is wholely ineffective.
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There’s been a growing narrative that children are becoming more spoiled in general because parents keep deferring to their demands, or react badly whenever schools or other people point out that their kids are misbehaving, even threatening lawsuits. A fear of Karens is used as justification by schools to not crack down on bullies, as Lostinlodos insisted in one of his rant threads. It’s not just the US; where I am there is this idea that “Western liberal values” have corrupted society to make children nastier and people less willing to punish them.
The problem there is that any fan of corporal punishment can always fall back on the overused excuses of “I got hit when I was a kid and I turned out perfectly fine” and “If you losers weren’t so unresilient you wouldn’t be so sensitive about this”. It’s the sort of thinking that got us the pandemic situation that was a lot worse than it really needed to be.
Lets fill those budget holes, give kids criminal records, and an excuse for cops to put them into gang databases because they did bad things before.
Just wait till a cop screws up and tickets a white kid & suddenly this will be front page news about how wrong it is, until then its business as usual, reminding those with more melanin of their place in this world.
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Yeah, under the massa’s – I mean LEO’s – boot.
Good
They’re students. This will teach them about the police. Some lessons suck, some teachers suck even more.
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And some school principals shouldn’t be in the job.
Another fine example of why law enforcement should never have been allowed to become for-profit, the incentives that creates doesn’t encourage corruption it ensures it.
Get those kindergartners!
You need to get them when they are young. Kindergartners can be brutal to the point of doing things such as walking out of line, not raising their hand before speaking, and doing something when Simon doesn’t say, hopefully we can get cops in those rooms to start ticket these heinous offenses.
So they've moved on to students now...
“Illinois Cops Are Hitting Students”
You’re going to ticket an 8 year old?
Good luck collecting. It’s not like they own any assets. Are you going to garnish their allowance?
The revenue assessors (cops) in the 49 other states just raised an eyebrow.
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The revenue assessors (cops) in the 49 other states have begun to pay attention.
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I don’t see what the issue is here. Failing to discipline children who don’t any better is precisely why we have woke millennials angry about having to take responsibility for their actions and woke judges enabling their behavior. You idiots keep failing at your jobs then get pissed at cops like my son when they get called in to fix the messes you left behind.
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So you’re criticizing how bad other people are at making sure kids are raised up right, but you’re admitting your kid became a cop? You should stop telling on yourself.
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You idiots keep failing at your jobs then get pissed at cops like my son when they get called in to fix the messes you left behind.
If that’s what you call ‘fixing the messes’ that’s why I think you and people like your son are assholes.
They’re KIDS for fucks sake, you insensitive piece of shit. Perhaps if your fucking son got tickets or police involvement every time he fucked up, you’d find out what the working end of his ‘fixes’ really accomplishes.
Fucking assholes like you are why people have no respect for you or your fucking kid.
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Given the fact that cops like your son shoot at autistic teenagers for possession of toys, your argument just failed. Epically.
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Instantly going directly to the preferred conservative term “Woke” to defend against commentary one doesn’t like betrays the “Comatose” mentality behind one’s reasoning.
But that’s irrelevant.
If the fines were going exclusively to the school or the department of education, that would be an entirely different thing altogether.
But this is just another example of using fines to finance poorly run government.
Police should not be used as revenue collectors nor revenue generators.
Using police to fine adolescents for bad behavior to help balance the budget is not just a slippery slope, it’s an idiotic idea.
But oddly these sort of programs are always supported by individuals who are against government interference.
One doesn’t have to be “woke” to see the stupidity in this plan.
Police should do police work, not be revenue collectors for local government.
Instead of superintendents and politicians taking the time to find a better solution, they defer to the simplest blunt option, fines and using the police.
Instead of fines how about having these kids participate in programs that benefit the community?
These kind of “punishments” require effort and imagination, while fines require no effort from those that default to that kind of “solution”.
Does this help the police or just give them another job to do that’s not what they were trained for, nor what they should be doing and is definitely not something that endears them to the general public?
Defending stupid policies created by stupid lawmakers, is not creating love for law enforcement… it just cements them in place as tools of ineffective and overreaching government.
If you want them to be treated as heroes, then stop supporting policies and politicians who turn them into pariahs.
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If this is the fake davec, then fake davec really did keep That One Guy’s advice in mind
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davec hasn’t been posting beyond a couple threads where he continues to justify screaming at everyone who didn’t like Chauvin. My guess is he’s realized it’s far easier to not sign in.
I dunno, correct me if I am wrong but offensive words and gestures are protected speech are they not?
also a student underage still has rights when they are in (and out of) school, also correct?
so this seems… court actionable to me.
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I dunno about the school rule; schools are given pretty broad discretion to discipline speech that is “disruptive” to the school, at least while on school property, but I agree that the ordinance should be unconstitutional.
What are the parents doing about it.
If that were my child that got a fine, I would be breaking in to their computers and erasing that fine so it would never have to be paid.
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Right, because every parent and guardian has the ability to break into police computers and hack them. *rolls eyes*
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I mean, what exactly can they do?
…I don’t know what I expected you to suggest, but this…
…Okay, let me see if I have this straight. Your solution to the problem of having to pay a large fine your child got hit with—almost certainly unjustifiably—is… breaking into a government-owned building—which is in itself a much larger crime with much larger and more severe penalties—filled with people who are supposed to uphold the law and seem to have no qualms going overboard with abusing their authority (and who are likely armed) and likely filled with surveillance cameras… in order to hack their computer (another crime) in order to tamper with police records (yet another crime)… all just so you won’t have to pay that fine…? (Because let’s face it: the kid ain’t paying for it.)
I… I don’t even…
Setting aside the fact that the number of people who would even be capable of hacking a computer like that would be pretty small, and the number of people capable of succeeding in the entire thing is vanishingly small, that’s just so… stupid! In all likelihood, assuming you’re not killed (which is sadly a distinct possibility in such a situation), you’re likely to be not just charged but easily convicted for a number of far worse crimes than the initial alleged violation, ones with much heavier fines and/or a distinct chance of a prison sentence!
And then, of course, there is the aforementioned fact that it is highly unlikely that any of the parents or guardians of the children in question would even have the skills or know-how to even be able to attempt such a feat.
Look, I get wanting to defend your child and not wanting to pay an unjust fine—especially one so high—but this is just ridiculous!