SPD increased its presence outside Garfield following the June 2024 murder (Image: CHS)
The Seattle School Board has rejected a plan supported by Mayor Bruce Harrell and his police chief to return a uniformed Seattle Police Department officer to the Garfield High School campus citing concerns over disproportionate policing and the district’s failure to implement community recommendations in its proposal.
“I cannot vote yes on this package. The trust has been ruined,” board member Michelle Sarju said during the Wednesday night session. “You all have broken my trust over and over and over again.”
Wednesday night’s decision on a “a School Engagement Officer” at Garfield follows more than a year of debate over the proposal following the 2024 campus parking lot murder of student Amarr Murphy-Paine.
The return of an assigned campus police officer would roll back a Black Lives Matter-era reform. Previously known as community resource officers, the program was dropped by the district in the summer of 2020 during the height of Black Lives Matter protests against police killings when the school board suspended a partnership with SPD that provided five armed officers with rotations and placements across Seattle’s public schools.
After Murphy-Paine’s killing and ongoing gun violence around the city’s campuses, officials including Harrell have pushed to reestablish SPD’s presence. Harrell’s new Chief Shon Barnes also lobbied for the return during his confirmation process.
According to the Garfield PTSA, it had supported a plan that emphasized “supporting safety, not discipline” at the school but the district’s final proposal voted on by the board Wednesday night “contradicted our advocacy and the engagement with our community.”
Two members of the board — Brandon Hersey and Liza Rankin — voted yes on the plan.
CHS reported here on a summer community forum at Garfield as Principal Tarance Hart organized opportunities to talk about and shape the proposed pilot program.
Last year, Garfield and the district announced increased security at the school and other area campuses. CHS reported here on the launch last spring of a new district-wide “visitor management system” involving cameras, plus increased private security and SPD presence outside the campuses.
Neighborhood program Community Passageways also has been funded to provide two “violence interrupters who build positive relationships and help prevent conflicts,” a case manager, and staff around the campus perimeter to help ensure “safe passage support for students traveling to and from school.”
Hart said last year was his first year at Garfield without gun violence since he became principal in 2021.
Over the summer, Hart and Garfield also held the inaugural “Reclaiming the Village” summit as part of “fostering stronger relationships with its Black families,” Converge Media reported.
Harrell and District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth pushed to include the area around Garfield in the city’s expansion of the Seattle Police Department camera surveillance system. New Real Time Crime Center cameras will be installed in the Central District centered around safety at Garfield High School with boundaries running from a block north of the school along E Cherry all the way to S Jackson. The western edge will include 20th Ave and the eastern edge will extend along 26th Ave. The zone will include Garfield’s 23rd Ave campus, the Garfield Super Block area including the Garfield Community Center and sports fields, and the troubled parking lot at 23rd and Jackson.
Wednesday’s vote may end for now the proposal for a year-long pilot of an assigned officer working on the Garfield campus but SPD has continued to maintain an increased presence around the school since 2024’s deadly gun violence with a SPD cruiser parked in the campus parking lot most mornings and afternoons. Students have also reported encountering more officers including unmarked vehicles deployed on the 23rd Ave school’s edges with the start of the new school year.
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Given that SPD employs a significant number of domestic abusers, some credibly accused of violence against children, this is the right choice. SPD needs to clean house and start enforcing some basic standards before we can trust these guys in schools and Harrell/Barnes have made it clear that they’re not going to do it.
A lot of the restorative justice programs and mentorship programs also have a lot of domestic abusers and other seriously unethical people. Should we start enforcing a basic standard before we trust these guys with our tax dollars and children?
The case of Rob Mahoney (now fortunately retired) comes to mind:
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Cop-who-kissed-Explorer-was-subject-of-sexual-886332.php
It’s clear that SPD doesn’t have the leadership necessary to keep kids safe from predatory officers.
Get those privacy-invading cameras out of my neighborhood.
The board members who voted against having assigned school officers should be forced to make an actual proposal of an alternative that we should try in order to keep our kids safe. Don’t like cops? Fine, but how will you keep my kids safe?
if you actually read the article and follow the links you will find several alternatives have been proposed and even put into place.
More money to activists
I would rather give one million dollars to activists than give one dollar to the police.
There are multiple proposals already. Try reading before you comment.
How many more shootings does Garfield need to have before the SPS Board does the right thing and protects our children?? I feel much safer having an officer in my child’s school.
it’s about the safety of our children at Garfied, it as nothing to do with BLM. Need to focus the lack of parenting instead of blaming the police. Staff, students, and parents should have the final say not the board.
And I feel much safer not having police anywhere near my children.
Garfield students, faculty, and parents should have the final say on this one way or another. It’s annoying when people who don’t have a stake in this weigh in pro or anti.
PTSA weighs in right there in the article. Along with other local community groups, admins, parents etc.
let the people inside the school vote. They are brushing the issues under the rug. I’m not sending my kids to Garfield. I graduated from GHS and we know who the cause of the cycle of violence obviously not the cops. All lives matter when it comes to safety of the school.
This is a good idea. Let the students who attend GHS, the parents who have students attending GHS, the teachers who teach at GHS, and the other staff members who work at GHS take a vote. Should GHS have an officer on site or not? If the majority votes yes, then the school gets an officer. If the majority votes no, then the school goes without. Let the decision be made by the people who will be most impacted by it.
Using the reactionary slogan “all lives matter” here is profoundly out of touch, especially when it originated from the same people who wanted to brush the entire issue of police accountability under the rug during the Black Lives Matter protest movement, even though police accountability was the ENTIRE point. The Black Lives Matter slogan was referring to the disproportionate police violence experienced by black Americans specifically, and saying that if black lives don’t hold value in the eyes of the state (as demonstrated by the insane rampant racist police violence plaguing our country), then no lives can matter to the state, in principle, because law enforcement is supposed to be unbiased and for the benefit of all (even though we clearly know it’s rooted in slave-catching in the US). It’s the ability to protect our most vulnerable that determines the moral worth our society, and BLM called direct attention to ingrained structural deficiencies in our “law enforcement” institutions.
The fact that you don’t see the structural decay within our police departments that led to the largest mass protest movement since the civil rights era, and are dense enough to state “…we know who the cause of the cycle of violence obviously not the cops” speaks absolute volumes. The myopia is impressive actually
@ chHill – did you attend GHS? do you have children at GHS? I’m a Seattle native and my siblings and I graduated from GHS. Do you know much about the gun violence from GHS and have you been in the crowd during the shooting? Sure let’s get rid of all police so that will not roll back the BLM era reform. We owe them forever because of slavery. World war 1 and 2, Vietnam war, Japan war, Korean War – so many people owing each other. I am not sending my children to GHS. The country has gotten out of control with crime and no consequences.
Read this article, the incident just happened a few days ago. A bunch of black teens were the perpetrators in this article. Yes we need to protect the black and continue to spoil them. I’m just going to send my kids to a school that has black but not too much black for the safety of my kids.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle-mother-harrowing-carjacking-attempt-city-sees-string-of-attacks/281-1af7c1d7-3bb6-4646-a46d-305ce77ac0ef
Bro you’re just blooming hate and living in your own reality. Sad!
There are, like, ten different disgustingly ignorant comments in your post. Please feel free to send your kids to a school far, far away from here. No one wants your racist nonsense here.
Garfield has lost ~9% of its student body from what it was in June of last year and reported for September of this year. Which was of course down by another 8% of the year before.
Despite SPS stating that it had a gain of 0.03% last year, that was not the case at all by the end of the year.
Will this encourage more parents to place faith in SPS to avoid additional gun violence? The numbers in the end will tell us how it turns out.
Some of the private schools offer late enrollment based on their class sizes, so there are options for students to decide with their feet.
Is gun violence the main reason why attendence at GHS is going down? Or are there other factors at play? I’ve heard its normal for high school enrollment to be lower in June than it is in September due to students moving away mid-year, dropping out, changing schools, etc.
It’s important that a bunch of Karens destroy the public school system to foment the revolution. Let the poor kids rot in crappy environments so they grow up angry, abused, neglected, poor and feeling screwed by someone and everyone. That’s the strategy. Many people don’t understand they’re supporting the strategy because they just think they’re helping “social justice” or undermining the “carceral system” or raising their fist for “revolution” and then they go back to Broadmoor and the gate closes and their kids have a great, safe education at SAAS. The people are voting with their feet. Enrollment is tanking and the people left are the “black and brown ppl” that everyone claims they really really care about. Keep watching TikTok for your information and soak up what the PRC, Iran and North Korea want you to know like good little fools.
When I was in high school our security guard was a 5 foot tall woman named Misty and someone (probably Misty) spread the rumor that she used to be a kickboxer in Thailand and had to leave the country after she accidentally kicked someone so hard it killed them. None of us every fucked with Misty.
We would have fucked with a cop for sure, though. Cops suck.
Tuff-ass Misty FTW
People who don’t have students at Garfield and are in no way affected by this making decisions for Garfield – so disappointing. The Garfield community overwhelmingly wants a School Engagement Officer.
But not IN the school. Just on the outside of it is all.
I have a student at Garfield. I was just there for for Curriculum Night, and the teachers were impressive, and the parent turn-out was least 80% for each class. There is already a marked SPD SUV in the parking lot during busy times, plus other new security, so it’s good from a safety perspective. Garfield offers a full slate of AP classes, including Calculus, which is well attended. The fear mongers on this thread either never been been to Garfield or didn’t suceed there due to their own failings. Go Bulldogs!
Seriously? “Own failings”???
That’s as out of touch as it gets. And you are a student or a parent? Or you work there? Which is it?
Listen dood…Some of us left home at 15 years and 2 weeks old. Jan. 1 is my Bday. I left with nothing but the cloths on my back. In the middle of winter. Is that “My failing”? Are you sure about that? Also? How do we know those folks are like you say they are? Or if someone disagrees they are clearly a failure. Right?
With people like you? Who needs parents?
So they choose to do notihing