Wake County Employs SROs in 80 Schools; Some Parents and Civil Rights Advocates Say Their Presence Harms and Criminalizes Students

Each morning, Andreana Allen sent her 14-year-old son on the school bus to East Garner Magnet Middle School and drove to work. Then she braced for the phone call from the school. 

“Eighth grade was a horror story,” she says. “He went to school only to get suspended.”

Since the age of 12, her son has been repeatedly suspended for charges such as “disruptive behavior.” In his eighth-grade year, he was suspended for 30 days and spent an additional 33 days in a stabilization room, a secluded space away from peers where he was to complete his schoolwork alone, according to a February 2024 complaint filed on his behalf by Legal Aid of North Carolina.

Allen says school resource officers (SROs), the law enforcement officers deployed in his school, have been called to intervene when he is accused of disruption. On one occasion, he was searched, handcuffed, and thrown to the ground by an SRO who claimed to have mistaken him for another individual, according to the legal brief. 

A spokesperson for the Wake County Public School System declined to comment, saying the school system is legally prohibited from commenting on Allen’s case. 

Allen’s son has an individualized education program (IEP) to address his mental health needs. His diagnoses, which include oppositional defiant behavior, can lead him to escalate conflict when confronted by authority, according to his mother.

Because his disability is not visible, however, Allen worries that people don’t understand his condition. 

“You don’t know what a person with a disability looks like,” she says. “You can’t know what a person suffers from. It’s like he’s a monster or a maniac or a menace. But then you see him cry and ball up into a fetal position …. It hurts.”

Allen’s son is one of many North Carolina students who regularly encounters SROs. A 2021 Duke University study found that 79 percent of schools serving 84 percent of students across the state have assigned officers. Nationally, North Carolina ranks among states with the highest police presence in schools but among the worst in overall school funding.

In the Wake County Public School System, 80 schools currently employ SROs—including in some elementary schools, every middle school, and nearly every high school. 

District representatives argue that the officers enhance student safety. Parents like Allen, though, worry that students of color and those with disabilities are disproportionately funneled into the criminal justice system. SRO critics are pushing for an alternative: unarmed, trained professionals in Wake County schools.

A safe and welcoming environment

Nearly 200 guns were reported on school campuses statewide in the 2022–23 school year. Statistics like that, and broader concerns about mass shootings, have prompted school districts to employ armed officers. Since 2016, North Carolina has spent over $100 million on SRO salaries and training. 

However, some studies suggest that officers don’t necessarily make a difference when shootings occur. 

A 2021 study reviewing nearly 40 years of mass school shootings concluded that “armed guards were not associated with a significant reduction in rates of injuries.”

A 2023 study found that while SROs effectively reduce some forms of violence, they do not prevent gun-related incidents. The study concluded that the officers’ presence also increases suspensions, police referrals, and arrests, particularly for Black students and students with disabilities.

SROs operate under a memorandum of understanding, an agreement between the board of education and law enforcement that outlines goals and principles. “The ultimate goal of the SRO Program is to provide a safe, inclusive and positive learning environment for all students and educators,” the document reads.

Capt. Rebe Mosley-Bobbitt, who served as an SRO in Wake County for 12 years, says the officers aim to deter crime, reduce emergency response times, and provide parents with peace of mind. She says that often, the officers can de-escalate disciplinary situations, encouraging students to sit down for respectful conversations with administration. 

“I had a very positive relationship with the students,” she says. “Until we live in a world where we can guarantee that no one will come on a campus to harm our students, we’ll continue to be armed for their protection.”

But not all students and parents feel safer in an officer’s presence. 

In 2020, 54,531 Wake County parents, students, school staff, and community members completed a survey assessing whether SROs made students feel safe, treated students appropriately, and were important for school security.

A majority of respondents—75 percent of parents and 52 percent of students—responded that SROs created a welcoming environment. But for Asian and Black students, the rates were lower. Less than half of those students—48 percent and 47 percent, respectively—felt that SROs created a welcoming space. 

The school-to-prison pipeline

Civil rights advocates worry that SROs may push students into the justice system for minor disciplinary infractions, fueling what they call the “school-to-prison pipeline.” The NC Department of Public Instruction refutes this notion, and its website states, “Carefully selected, specially trained school resource officers … do not arrest students for disciplinary issues that would be handled by teachers and/or administrators if the SROs were not there.”

The Brookings Institute, however, found that in the United States, school arrests increased by 52 percent following the introduction of a new SRO.

A North Carolina statute known as the “disorderly conduct” law makes it a crime to “disrupt, disturb, or interfere with teaching” or “disturb the peace” at any school. As a result, SROs are sometimes summoned when students skip class, argue with teachers, or refuse to participate in activities.

Elizabeth Simpson, an attorney with Emancipate NC, a criminal justice nonprofit, worries that a harsh punitive environment doesn’t cater to students’ individual needs.

“Not everyone can sit still for eight hours a day as a child,” she says. “But if they can’t do that, they’re going to be routed into incarceration.”

Jake Sussman, chief counsel for the Justice System Reform project in North Carolina, also believes that students in the state should feel supported in schools. “Yet, we see students being disturbingly manhandled and detained for things that are basic school disciplinary matters.” 

Criminalization of youth disproportionately affects lower-income communities, Sussman says. “You see criminal prosecutions for behaviors that are handled internally in private schools or schools predominantly populated by white students in wealthier ZIP codes.”

An ACLU report found that between 2017 and 2023 in North Carolina, Black students received disorderly conduct referrals at four times the rate of white students.

Students with disabilities were also referred to law enforcement at a rate of 2.5 times that of students without disabilities.

Clinton Robinson, chief of staff and strategic planning for Wake County Public Schools, acknowledged concerns about these rates in an email statement to the INDY. 

“The data showing that Black and Brown students face higher rates of ticketing, suspension, and interactions with SROs compared to their white peers is deeply concerning,” he wrote. “This disparity reflects broader systemic issues that we need to address proactively if we are committed to equity in education.”

He said the district’s annual School Resource Officer Summit, where district leaders and law enforcement collaborate on best practices, focuses on topics such as implicit bias, accountability, and equity.

Trust, and the lack thereof

Captain Mosley-Bobbitt hopes that SROs can foster trust between law enforcement and students. She says that sometimes, she runs into students from the schools she served. “They hug me and they thank me for what I did for them when they were in middle school,” she says.

But Sussman worries that the officers can have the opposite effect, dismantling trust in law enforcement. “You create an adversarial dynamic where matters of discipline and safety are handled with a badge or taser or handcuffs,” he says.

Kerwin Pittman, a 37-year-old Raleigh native, served 11.5 years in North Carolina prisons. Since his release, he has become an activist, founding a nonprofit organization focused on reducing recidivism. 

Pittman says his relationship with law enforcement was tainted from the time he was six years old. There were SROs present in his Wake County elementary, middle, and high schools. 

“The presence of officers in my school never made me feel safe. It made me feel like I was going into the lion’s den,” he says.

Pittman says that when he was in middle school, an incident with the school principal led to him being tackled by an SRO and suspended from school. Throughout his schooling, Pittman says he watched the officers arrest many of his peers.

“None of the members of my community trust law enforcement because we’ve never seen them as models that protected us,” he says. “We’ve seen them as people we had to be protected from.”

Making peace

When Candace Robinson’s 13-year-old son was being severely physically and emotionally harassed by another student at Rolesville Middle School last school year, she says she relentlessly urged her school’s administration to take action. Feeling that her demands were being neglected, Robinson says she appealed her concerns to the district superintendent and the mayor, who then referred her to the sheriff’s office. 

Robinson provided security camera evidence of the physical abuse to the sheriff. She says the sheriff explained that she could involve an SRO and the boy bullying Robinson’s son could face a misdemeanor charge and, if the abuse continued, a possible felony.

Robinson says she was taken aback by the suggestion. 

“I was looking at the phone like, ‘Wait, wait. What did she just say?’ The boy is in eighth grade,” she says.

Robinson says she told the sheriff she was disappointed that involving law enforcement was a proposed solution. The boy bullying her son was also Black and also had behavioral issues. Although she desperately wanted redress for her own child, she could not reconcile saddling another mother’s son with a criminal record.

“That could cost his future,” she says. “As a parent, I could take a pen to paper and charge him with something that could follow him for life.”

Robinson decided against engaging law enforcement. “But if I was a different type of parent, I would’ve signed it off,” she says.

Representatives of Rolesville Middle School and the Wake County school system say they’re legally prohibited from commenting on the incident.

Wake County sheriff Willie Rowe told the INDY in a statement that he does not take reports of bullying lightly. 

“The Wake County Sheriff’s Office is committed to ensuring that every child feels safe and supported at school, and we take all reports of bullying very seriously,” Rowe said. He added that in September of 2023, the SRO at Rolesville Middle School received a report of bullying and that “a decision was made to seek resolution through alternative means” after discussions with the student’s parent.

“Our office was then informed that the chosen program was completed, and no further action was required or requested of our agency,” Rowe continued. “We encourage students and parents to report any instances of bullying. Together, we can create a safer, more positive environment for all students.”

But Allen wonders why schools rush to invoke law enforcement. “Why have we gotten away from just having a conversation?” she asks.

Fights and disputes are inevitable in schools, Sussman says. But SROs aren’t the only possible response, in his view.

“Nonuniformed, trained professionals can help diffuse tensions without the binary choice of ‘Change your behavior or I’m gonna put you in handcuffs and take you to jail,’” Sussman says. 

Emancipate NC’s Simpson points to HEART (Holistic Empathetic Assistive Response Team) in Durham as a successful community-centered alternative to policing. 

Miguel “Mike” Figueras, a parent organizer with the Education Justice Alliance (EJA), a student justice nonprofit, agrees. “Police officers are trained to enforce laws …. They are not experts in adolescent development, restorative practices, mental health support,” the group’s proposal says. 

EJA is aiming to launch a Peacebuilders pilot program, where trained, unarmed professionals de-escalate conflict. 

The program would need to be paired with a robust network of school psychologists, mental health therapists, and nurses, Figueras explains. The National Association of School Psychologists recommends a ratio of 500 students per school psychologist. Currently in North Carolina, one school psychologist serves 2,970 students.

Sussman believes that reimagining the system won’t be easy, nor will it be perfect. “I’m not suggesting this is a panacea and you solve all the problems on the first day. But it’s a commitment to change,” he says. “And on the rare occasion that none of the nonviolent interventions work, you have law enforcement who’s available. But that’s a very different scenario than having police officers just walk the halls.”

The district’s stance

District leaders have discussed the merits of a Peacebuilders program. 

At a Wake County schools work session on September 3, some school board members expressed support for a Peacebuilders program to complement the existing SRO system.

“We know that officers have to do their job and their duty,” said board member Toshiba Rice, “but sometimes in some communities, having an officer there itself invokes a certain level of anxiety and stress and fear.”

Monika Johnson-Hostler, the former school board chair who was elected to the state legislature in November, said she hopes the district launches a Peacebuilders program for young students. “If we normalize Peacebuilders programs in elementary schools … by the time they get to high school, they know that this is the system of accountability and support.”

Clinton Robinson echoed the district’s willingness to consider employing unarmed professionals. 

“I think it’s important to remain open to all ideas that can contribute to creating a safe and supportive school environment,” he wrote in a statement to the INDY. “Programs like Peacebuilders, as well as trained social workers and counselors, can certainly play a valuable role in addressing the social and emotional needs of students and fostering a positive school climate.

“While the role of school resource officers has traditionally been one part of that strategy, it’s equally important to evaluate how non-policing options like those mentioned can complement or even enhance our current efforts. As with any initiative, we’d need to carefully assess these alternatives to ensure they align with the unique needs of our schools and communities.”

At the September 3 meeting, Robinson urged community members to fill out an SRO complaint form when they have concerns about the SRO program. “I implore people to let us know,” he said, “because that’s how we’ll know when we need to take action.”

“I don’t feel like my son was vindicated” 

Last school year, Allen’s son transitioned to South Garner High School, where, according to the Legal Aid brief, he was suspended on his second day. He was then reassigned to the Garner Evening alternative learning program, typically for students expelled from daytime school.

His difficulties have taken a toll on Allen, a single mother. “I had to quit one job just so I could keep going back and forth, because by the time I got to work, I was getting a phone call,” she says. “I got behind on my mortgage. I got behind on my bills. I had to play catch-up.”

In February, Allen filed the claim against the Wake school system, alleging that it failed to accommodate her son’s behavioral disabilities. She and the district participated in a mediation to discuss the issue. 

But in her eyes, the damage has already been done. “I don’t feel like my son was vindicated,” she says. “This will have a long-term effect on him.”

During the mediation, Allen says she met another woman whose experiences paralleled her own. “It’s like nobody understands until you go to these meetings and meet parents who are just like you,” she says. “She cried for me and I cried for her because our stories were so similar.”

Storey Wertheimer is a student at Duke University and a reporter for the 9th Street Journal.

Correction: Legal Aid filed its complaint on behalf of Andreana Allen in February 2024, not 2023. There was an error in the date on the complaint document. The story has been corrected.