Oakland School Board Votes To Eliminate Its Police Department

The school board in Oakland, California, unanimously voted on Wednesday to dismantle the school district’s police department — making the district the latest to cut ties with law enforcement amid nationwide anti-racism protests.

At a school board meeting on Wednesday night, all seven board members voted in favor of the “George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the Oakland School Police Department.” The resolution needed a simple majority to pass.

Oakland Unified School District has its own police department, with over 120 officers and other personnel working in the district, which serves over 35,000 students, most of whom are Black and brown. Nineteen California school districts have their own police forces, including in Los Angeles.

Since nationwide protests against racism and police brutality began in late May after the police killing of George Floyd, several school systems have cut ties with police, including in Portland, Oregon, and in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed. In San Francisco, across the bay from Oakland, the school board unanimously voted to remove police from its schools on Tuesday.

However, the campaign to remove police from Oakland schools started long before the recent protests. Organizers, parents and students have been pushing for years for police-free schools. The Black Organizing Project started its campaign in 2011 after an Oakland school police officer fatally shot 20-year-old Raheim Brown outside a school dance.

“What happens in terms of policing in schools is interconnected to the same issues we see in policing in our cities,” Black Organizing Project’s executive director, Jackie Byers, told HuffPost on Monday ahead of the school board vote. “There is a different approach a lot of law enforcement have in dealing with Black and brown children, and even seeing them as children.”