New Era as Police Prepare to Run School Security

Bringing to a close a wrenching debate about the role of police officers in schools, the New York City Board of Education is prepared to vote today to turn over school security to the Police Department.

Under the plan, the training, recruiting and managing of the Division of School Safety's 3,200 officers will be turned over to the Police Department, though they will not carry guns. In addition, uniformed and armed police officers will continue to patrol 128 of the city's 1,100 schools.

The issue of police influence in schools has weighed heavily on the system, playing a key role in the departure of Ramon C. Cortines as Chancellor in October 1995.

Mr. Giuliani engaged in a bitter feud with Mr. Cortines, who opposed police control of school safety as an interference in the learning atmosphere for the system's 1.1 million schoolchildren. Mr. Cortines cited the dispute as a reason for his resignation.

Shortly after the current Chancellor, Dr. Rudy Crew, was appointed, he made clear that he also opposed police control of school safety. But Dr. Crew's relations with Mr. Giuliani have been amiable and the two crafted a compromise in which the Police Department is in charge but, for the time being, does not increase its personnel in the schools.

The measure to be voted today is essentially a broad outline of the takeover, but numerous questions remain, among them these: Who decides whether a hallway fistfight warrants an arrest by the police or a suspension by the principal? Will the current 3,200 officers be retrained? Who has the final say on whether to add more schools to regular police patrols, the Police Commissioner or the Chancellor?

Experts in public schools say that New York appears to be the first big-city school system in which the municipal Police Department is to oversee school security. More common, said Henry Duvall of the Council of Great City Schools, a consortium of 51 urban districts, is what New York City now has: separate security forces operated by a school district and supplemented in some cases by officers from the municipal police force.

The takeover has been urged for five years by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has contended that the move would improve safety and erase a Board of Education unit whose officers and officials have been involved in school crimes and corruption over the years.

School officials have grappled with improving the Division of School Safety almost since it was created in 1969 and quickly derided as the ''F Troop.'' But they have long resisted such a move because of fears that the police would infringe on educators' autonomy and create a prisonlike air in schools.

Some students from black and Hispanic communities, where tension with police officers has been common, carry their distrust of the department into schools.

Fernando Lopez, 18, a senior at George Washington High School in Washington Heights, said he had detected a difference in personality between school safety officers and police officers.

''With security guards,'' he said, ''you could be friends. With cops, there's tension. We're going to have to keep our distance.''

The proposal is the result of a compromise between City Hall and 110 Livingston Street worked out over the last few months after a change in the political makeup of the board gave Mayor Giuliani the best chance he has had to implement the plan. Two members who opposed the police in schools, Luis O. Reyes and Carol Gresser, were replaced on July 1 by Irving Hamer Jr., who has said he opposes the plan, and Terri Thomson, who is likely to vote for it.

The 3,200 officers in the board's Division of School Safety will become employees of the New York Police Department but will not be sworn, armed law enforcement officers.

They will be commanded by a Deputy Chief for School Security, who will appoint a liaison to the Chancellor and serve on an oversight committee whose membership will be named by the Chancellor and the Mayor.

But the plan leaves several questions unanswered -- neither the Chancellor, Police Commissioner Howard Safir nor Mayor Giuliani have commented in detail -- though board officials say they will be worked out before the takeover takes effect, sometime between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31.

A key question among critics of the plan is whether principals truly maintain their authority over school discipline.

Board officials say they do, unless a serious incident arises. But who prevails -- the principal or the Police Department -- on borderline cases like student fights remains murky. The language of the ''memorandum of understanding,'' which has not been publicly released but has been leaked to reporters, leaves ample room for either to decide.

''School security personnel and/or N.Y.P.D. officers, to the fullest extent practicable, in instance not requiring immediate arrest or other immediate action, shall consult with the principal of a school or his or her designee prior to placing a student enrolled at such school under arrest,'' the memo says. ''Officers shall take into account any information provided by the principal or designee.''

Other points still to be worked out include specifically how the training of officers will differ and whether any of the current force will be dismissed or retrained. The memo says that within two months of the implementation, tentatively set for Nov. 1 and renewable after four years, the police will put in place a ''recruitment, hiring and training plan'' in consultation with the Chancellor's staff but leaves open whether that means new recruits or current personnel.

The plan does not call for an increase in the number of schools already patrolled by one to three regular police officers beyond the 128. But it does leave open the option if the Chancellor and Police Commissioner concur although it does not spell out what happens if they do not.

Dr. Crew and William C. Thompson Jr., president of the Board of Education, have worked the phone and held meetings over the summer to ease concerns about a plan that some believe presents far more sensitivities than the merger of the transit and housing police with the regular Police Department.

''The school is a community where established relationships among teachers, guidance counselors and students are more important than those with the police,'' said Jeremy Travis, head of the National Institute of Justice and a former New York police deputy commissioner who headed a commission that studied the school safety division in the early 1990's. ''The overwhelming responsibility for safety is with that community, not the police.''

Mr. Thompson, the Brooklyn representative on the board, had at first opposed a larger police role in the schools but said he supported the plan because it did not mandate an increase in armed patrol of schools and proposed that precinct commanders, principals, parents and staff sit down and work out a safety plan for individual schools.

''It's a good compromise,'' he said in an interview.

Others, too, who had expressed reservation have been won over.

Dennis Walcott, president of the New York Urban League, who had opposed a police takeover in principle, said he supported this plan after a recent briefing with the Chancellor and board president.

''I support it,'' said Mr. Walcott, who was appeased when it became clear the guards would not be armed police officers who might put ''an air into the schools that does not need to be there.''

He added: ''I think there are some issues that need to be resolved. But I have a lot of confidence in the Chancellor and board president to really negotiate and do what is best for the children.''

Others, though, said they would withhold judgment until the details of the plan were worked out. Among them was Carl Haynes, president of Teamsters Local 232, which represents the school safety officers.

A spokeswoman said he had met with board officials yesterday afternoon and was reviewing the plan. Likewise, a spokeswoman for the principals' union said that it had just received a copy of the proposal and that officials were reviewing it.

Among students, there was both suspicion of the police and hopes that safety might improve.

James Johnson, 16, a junior at Martin Luther King High School in Manhattan, said safety mighty improve if the police controlled security, but he had misgivings.

''All police officers ain't good police officers,'' said Mr. Johnson, who said he has been stopped by officers looking for suspected drug dealers. ''Some of them bother you for no reason. They assume things about you because of the way you dress or the way you carry yourself.''

Roger Rodriguez, 16, a ninth grader at John Jay High School in Brooklyn, said he would rather not see the police control security.

''As long as they don't mess with me, it won't be a problem,'' he said. ''But some cops just like to be jerks.'' Mr. Rodriguez added that he had recently been ticketed for trespassing on a friends' stoop but that the case had been dismissed.

Other students, like Francesca Fontaine, 16, a junior at King, seemed more receptive to the idea.

''Personally, I don't think it's going to be a problem,'' she said. ''It will be like having another security guard, just well trained and more experienced.''