Instead of calling local police any time a student is suspected of a crime, the Long Beach Unified School District may soon empower its in-house safety officers to handle low-level offences.
At a school board meeting Wednesday, the district proposed allowing school safety officers, or SSOs, to cite and arrest students for small crimes. Under the plan, SSOs would refer cited students to an LBUSD diversion program. If students participate in diversion, their citations would be dismissed without ever being filed in court.
“We are looking to take over handling all infractions and misdemeanors that originate from our school sites,” Cameron Smith, the district’s director of school safety, said in a presentation to the board. This strategy would allow the district to maintain control over how these incidents are handled, he said.
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The changes Smith laid out are part of a multi-year process for reimagining school safety, spurred in part by the reforms community members demanded after 18-year-old Mona Rodriguez was shot and killed by an SSO in 2021. A wave of changes, from better training to standardized policies, have already been implemented to improve how SSOs respond to incidents. This proposed policy now aims to reduce reliance on police departments, increase diversion pathways for students and recruit and retain SSOs. It elicited both concern and support from board members, who will vote on the plan on Oct. 1…