POMONA, Calif. — Pomona schools won’t have school resource officers on campus this year.
A student-led campaign was successful in asking Pomona Unified School District to defund the police.
Iris Villalpando was part of the three-year effort by Gente Organizada to remove officers from campuses.
She said officers made students like her feel unsafe on campus.
“Not a good experience with police in our streets, and now we have them in our schools. We know how they treat our parents, we see how they are within our communities, and so to just have them around is just unsettling,” Villalpando said.
She and other students like Destiny Rivera-Gomez started collecting student experiences with campus officers. Rivera-Gomez read dozens of anonymous testimonies from students who recalled being questioned without parents and wrongfully accused.
The stories made her emotional.
“A lot of sadness and a lot of concern because I have a little brother, and a lot of these were about young men,” Rivera-Gomez said.
Pomona Unified’s school resource officers will be assigned elsewhere within the police department. The district said it will hire security if needed.
Pomona Unified is one of many districts either considering removal or that have removed SROs.
The California School Resource Officers Association says response times to violent situations may be longer as a result, and it’s a missed opportunity to build relationships.
“When we can break down the negative stereotypes we have on both sides, that from the students to the officers, officers to the students, that makes us a better community,” said Wayne Sakamoto, executive director of the California School Resource Officers Association. “I think that is one of the most powerful things about having law enforcement on campus.”
For Villalpando, the removal of law enforcement is a sign of victory. It’s a reminder that young people have a voice and can create change.
“In the back of my head, I kept thinking how can we make this permanent? How can we make this a thing so that other schools across California also have this victory because I want to share this,” Villalpando said. “I don’t want it to just stay in Pomona.”
The students have been working with State Senator Connie Leyva’s office to defund more campus police programs statewide.