Police Urged For Schools

Robyn Doolittle, The Toronto Star
May 20, 2008

Toronto board panel tables action plan after Falconer’s hard-hitting report on hallway safety

A heightened police presence in school buildings, new procedures for dealing with peer sexual assault, and dozens of new staff to work with marginalized youth – these are just a few of the recommendations made by a panel of Toronto District School Board staff in response to January’s Falconer Report.

The recommendations, obtained by the Star and scheduled for release this morning, call for enhanced “positive police interactions with students in school buildings” and a plan to establish a model to “further engage” police in Toronto schools.

Today’s report stops short of saying uniformed officers should be patrolling hallways. Instead, police will be providing more resources to schools and working to “strengthen the security around the school,” said trustee Cathy Dandy.

“I can assure you, it is not at all the intent to turn our schools into police buildings. We have to deal with the reality,” she said. “We’re not going to pretend that knives and guns aren’t in our schools. We know they’re there. We want to take it seriously.”

The report must still be voted upon by the full board.

One year ago this Friday, 15-year-old Jordan Manners was gunned down inside C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute. Last June, the Toronto District School Board created a School Community Safety Advisory Panel, headed by lawyer Julian Falconer, to consider the events leading up to the tragedy.

Falconer’s 1,000-page report, released in January, painted an unflattering picture of life at many Toronto high schools: drugs, guns, gangs, sexual aggression and a financially impotent board that can’t find funding to solve the problems.

Falconer’s report also unearthed details of an alleged gang sex assault against a 14-year-old Muslim girl at C.W. Jefferys. The school’s then-principal and former vice-principals were later charged under the Child and Family Services Act with failing to report the incident. That came after Falconer learned that vice-principal Silvio Tallevi learned of the incident, but did not report it to police, ostensibly because the girl could not identify the boys. These charges were dropped because of the time it took to have them sworn, but the Crown plans to appeal.

Source