Texas' experiment stationing police officers on every public school campus has produced more than 2,600 documented use-of-force incidents against students since January 2022. That is the finding of a joint investigation by The New York Times and The San Antonio Express-News published in late May.
The finding adds a large-scale case study to independent academic research showing police presence in schools raises arrest and suspension rates without consistently improving safety.
Force outpacing oversight
Texas began requiring an officer at every campus in 2023, a year after the Robb Elementary shooting in Uvalde killed 19 students and two teachers. Annual state spending on school security has since risen to more than $1.3 billion, up from about $900 million. Texas now has nearly 400 school district police departments, more than all other US states combined, employing roughly 11,000 trained school officers, KSAT reported.
Reporters tallied the use-of-force total using records from about 200 of the state's more than 1,000 school districts, calling the figure an undercount. Children as young as six were handcuffed, and at least two teenagers suffered concussions after being slammed to the ground or shocked with Tasers.
Tayshawn Chadwick, 17, was shocked repeatedly with a Taser in December 2023 after trying to retrieve his house keys before leaving school grounds. "It felt like a lightning bolt," Chadwick told The Texas Tribune.
Anabelle Jaramillo, a 17-year-old honour student, was handcuffed and pinned to the floor in 2024 after misplacing a $13 classroom doorbell.
A 2023 federal appeals court ruling sided with an officer who used a Taser on a 17-year-old with an intellectual disability trying to leave school, News from the States reported. The court compared the use of force to corporal punishment, which is legal in Texas schools.
No state agency reviews use-of-force incidents in Texas schools. Two dozen school board members told investigators that oversight of their police departments was not part of their job. “We just approve what they need to buy,” said Michael Valdez, a board member in the Edgewood school district in San Antonio.
Independent research confirms the pattern
The findings track with a 2023 national study published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Researchers Lucy Sorensen and Montserrat Avila-Acosta found that one additional school resource officer (SRO) per 500 students raised student arrests and law enforcement referrals by 52%. The same study found out-of-school suspensions rose 62%, with the increases most pronounced for Black students, male students and students with disabilities.
Sorensen said the research shows that stationing police officers in schools comes with serious tradeoffs. “We recommend that school districts weigh these tradeoffs carefully in determining the size and scope of their SRO programs and consider alternative school violence prevention approaches that support, rather than police, students,” Sorensen said.