WTTW | Chicago Aldermen Call for Police to Be Pulled From CPS Schools

Matt Masterson | June 16, 2020 1:59 pm

Caleb Reed, a student at Mather High School on the city’s North Side, was attending a school basketball game when he was approached by a school resource officer who asked for his ID.

Reed, a sophomore at the time, had forgotten to bring his ID with him and ended up being arrested and held by police for six hours before his eventual release.

“The situation was so wrong and it upsets me so much,” he said, “that I don’t want to ever see no black person go through that ’cause they are misunderstood or they don’t have nobody to talk to.”

Reed was among the youth activists who spoke during a press conference Tuesday supporting a newly proposed ordinance that would terminate the $33 million contract between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Police Department and remove school resource officers (SROs) from district schools.

The Police Free Schools Ordinance, introduced this week by Chicago Alds. Roderick Sawyer (6th), Jeanette Taylor (20th) and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), seeks to eliminate that intergovernmental agreement and instead use those funds on additional nurses, counselors, case managers and other wraparound services in CPS schools.

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