Seattle Public Schools hire security guards, counselors to fight crime on campus instead of bringing back cops

Students in Seattle were welcomed back to school by security guards following spikes in violence in the wake of the district booting police officers off campuses in 2020. The added security is coming to 11 campuses which Seattle Public Schools (SPS) says have the highest rates of violence.

SPS contracted with a company to hire 16 security guards to be stationed outside the schools. One guard is assigned to each “comprehensive high school,” and two to five “focus schools,” including Chief Sealth, Franklin, Garfield, Ingraham, and Rainier Beach high schools, which have seen the most violence, including shootings, in the past 3 years.

The district will also be hiring 15 new safety and security specialists as part of a $12.25 million investment to prevent violence and expand mental health support for students. Specialists are unarmed but will be trained in de-escalation techniques and focus on building relationships with students, patrolling the campus, and monitoring lunch and class transition times.

Firearm-free zone signs and video surveillance equipment will also be installed in some high schools and middle schools. In June, 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine was shot and killed while trying to break up a fight in the Garfield HS parking lot. No arrests have been made. This followed a student being shot in the leg earlier in the year.

In 2023, police were called to Ingraham High School when a student brought a gun on campus, six months after a student was shot and killed inside the school. In 2021, students at Ingraham were threatened on campus by two people with an AR-15. The school did not inform the parent body until 24 hours later, following pressure from the parents of the students who were threatened but no meaningful security upgrades or preventative action was taken.

That same year a violent homeless encampment set up shop at Broadview Thompson K-8 and saw violence in tents and the surrounding area including assaults and firefights. Drug dealers were seen making stops at the encampment and sex workers were on site regularly.

According to Fox 13, SPS and the Seattle Police Department are still discussing what role school resource officers could play but for now, police will only be seen on patrol outside of high schools during lunch, and before and after school, and not be allowed to work inside school buildings.

On Wednesday, two school resource officers, Tanner Good, and Brandon King, helped apprehend the suspect in the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Seattle Public Schools banned school resource officers from district campuses in 2020 following the BLM and Antifa riots that rocked the city as well as the defund the police movement. Since then, violence has increased both inside and outside Seattle public schools, but the district has refused to bring police back to campuses.