A new California bill would require K-12 schools statewide to have at least one armed officer, also known as a school resource officer or SRO, on campus during regular school hours and other times students are present.
The bill, formally known as AB 3038, was introduced by Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Corona) as part of a trio of public safety bills the lawmaker announced during a Tuesday news conference.
“California has experienced 96 school shootings between 2018 and 2023. If we want to get serious about preventing school shootings and stopping them before they can happen, we need good guys and girls with guns, ready to act,” Essayli said.
The American Civil Liberties Union has previously spoken out against having permanent police officers on public school campuses after a 2021 study detailed the dangers of having more police officers at public schools.
The report found that Black students’ arrest rates are 7.4 times higher, Latino students’ arrest rates are 6.9 times higher, and students with disabilities’ arrest rates are 4.6 times higher in schools with assigned law enforcement than in schools without.
The report also noted that Black, Latino and students with disabilities also had higher law enforcement referral rates.
“No school in California should have a permanent police officer. School districts should not be able to create their own police departments or reserve forces, nor should they coordinate with any outside law enforcement agency to station law enforcement on a school campus,” the organization recommended at the time.
The other two bills Essayli introduced, AB 3037 and AB 3039, are designed to “restore firearms sentencing enhancement and remove anti-police bias from juries.”
The lawmaker highlighted data from the Public Policy Institute of California, which found that “an overwhelming majority of California adults say violence and street crime is either a big problem or at least somewhat of a problem in their community.”
He also added that a report from California DOJ found that “from 2017 to 2022, the homicide rate increased 23.9% while the robbery rate decreased 14.6%.”
Essayli was joined by law enforcement and public officers to introduce the trio of bills.