Somerville, Massachusetts school officials are temporarily suspending two police force programs after facing widespread backlash for calling law enforcement on a 6-year-old Black and Latino boy two years ago. 

The School Committee voted on May 17 to enact a moratorium on the School Resource Officer (SRO) and the Students and Teachers Engage Public Safety (STEPS) programs in Somerville, the Boston Globe reported.

A member of the School Committee, Sarah Philips, motioned for the resolution due to mounting evidence of the damaging effect having police officers on a school’s campus has on young students. The motion was aggressively supported by the mayor, Joseph Curtatone and several other members from various wards, according to Liberation News. There was only one opposing vote. 

Molly Fraust-Wylie, the mother of a second-grader said she was shocked police were ever allowed to take the children away. 

“This first step towards removing police from schools is the beginning of restoring my faith in our school system to be a safe place for all children,” Fraust-Wylie said. 

Flavia Peréa said the vote is a move in the right direction. In Nov. 2019, her first-grade son was reported to the police and Department of Children and Families after a female student said that he touched her inappropriately.

Peréa has argued that the school overreacted and did not follow state law. She said if a child is not sexually aware, the report is unnecessary.    

“There is really an entrenched police culture here in Somerville and it exists without any oversight,” Peréa said. “The police are clearly involved with schools for things that are not a public emergency. It’s a mess. You have principals calling the police on little kids and they don’t realize the rat nest parents have to go through to get rid of these records.”

Peréa’s son now has a criminal record which she has fought to try and get expunged. For the past 18 months, she has organized with other teachers and activists who were inspired by her son’s story. She later launched a website to detail all the work that’s been done thus far.   

The campaign group Justice for Flavia is working to remove police from schools and has led the way to fight the young boy’s criminal record. In April, the campaign contacted Mayor Curtatone, the superintendent and the School Committee via a letter signed by 400 people.    

Recently, the group has asked the community to join their fight for Peréa’s son.

Roughly six children were reported to the police in Somerville during the 2019-2020 school year. It’s now the second city in the state after Worcester to put a stop to the police force programs. Other school districts, including Framingham and Northampton, voted to ban the programs indefinitely, the Boston Globe reported.  

Matthew Kennedy, a member of the Defund Somerville Police Department steering committee, said the time to eliminate police from schools is now. 

“The national movement to remove police from schools is building momentum and we are proud that Somerville is leading the way,” Kennedy said. “We’ve been witnessing in real time the liberal recuperation of the radical concept of restorative justice, an alternative to carceral punishment. I now feel more confident that residents are beginning to understand that you can either have cops in schools or restorative justice, but not both,”

According to Liberation News, Peréa said the next step is to fully bar law enforcement from the school’s premises. 

“This is how schools can truly be spaces of learning and inspiration, where all children feel safe and nurtured,” she said. 

School Resource Officer