MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee judge ruled Monday that the city and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) have met a court order to reinstate school resource officers, avoiding daily fines that could have totaled thousands.
But in his ruling, Judge David Borowski made it clear that compliance came too late for student safety.
“MPS has an obligation to educate the roughly 50,000 students that are in their care,” said Borowski. “They have an obligation to keep them safe.”
The city had faced a contempt ruling last month for failing to meet the requirements of Act 12, which mandated the return of resource officers more than a year ago.
The city was given until March 15 to get SROs back in schools. If the city failed to meet the deadline, they would have faced a $1,000 daily fine.
At the hearing on Monday, the contempt ruling was dropped after Borowski ruled the city and MPS had complied with his order.
“There’s still a narrative out there from some people that putting police in schools is this big, horrible, awful thing,” said Borowski. “As others pointed out recently, the police are in the schools every single day. The difference here is that they are not being called and pulled off of patrol duty.”
Parent Charlene Abughrin, whose son attends an MPS school, sued the district last October for violating Act 12.
Abughrin said she is happy the officers are in schools, but she said she still has concerns about the decision behind where officers were assigned.
“I think they probably should be redistributed,” said Abughrin. “I want to know what’s the process now if schools need to request those safety officers. From the list, it looked like they were placed at all the nicer schools.”
She said her son’s school was not on that list. Abughrin also said if the city doesn’t keep the officers in place, she’s ready to take legal action again.
“If they withdraw officers again, if they don’t have them at the schools where they have the need for them at, I think we will definitely be revisiting the case,” she said.
Borowski echoed those concerns during Monday’s hearing. He dismissed the case with the stipulation that it can be reopened in his court if necessary.
“I’m not going to allow another judge to handle this,” said Borowski. “I’m not saying there aren’t other judges that can’t handle because there are other judges in civil that can handle this case, but given the amount of effort I exerted on it — plaintiffs, counsel, the two defense attorneys — over the last two or three months, it would be completely inappropriate to go in front of somebody else.”
SROs will work in pairs and will be deployed at 11 MPS schools. Borowski also granted a request to seal details about the officers serving as SROs.
