Officials 'agree to disagree' on cause of Collingswood police policy

At a town forum Tuesday night intended to explain the circumstances behind Collingswood's controversial policy of calling police for nearly every incident of student misconduct, officials "agreed to disagree" about why the procedure was adopted.

More than 200 parents, many with their elementary school-age children, packed into the Collingswood Senior Community Center ballroom to hear school district and law enforcement representatives offer accounts of the now-discarded policy. From May 25 to June 17, Collingswood schools called police officers 22 times for incidents sometimes as minor as kindergarten fights.

The policy was adopted following a May 25 meeting between three school district representatives, Mayor James Maley, Police Chief Kevin Carey, and three representatives from the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. In the weeks following that meeting, dozens of children - many of them elementary schoolers - were questioned by police for school misbehavior, all without parental notification.

One was a 9-year-old who allegedly said at a class party June 16 that the brownies being served were "made out of burned black people," according to a police report of the incident. The child's mother, Stacy dos Santos, said at Tuesday's meeting that her son - who was questioned by police - is afraid to return to school this fall.

"You guys did not act in the best interest of our children," dos Santos said to raucous applause. "You chose to use our children as pawns in this without any notification to parents."

More than a dozen parents criticized the policy of interviewing students, some as young as 7, without notifying parents.

"Were kids questioned by guys with guns without parental notification?" asked Tim Bower, a parent. "When did civil liberties go out the window?"

Carey said police are permitted to question students without parents present as long as those conversations do not rise to the level of custodial interrogation.

Parents have proposed amending school district policy so that parents must be notified before police interviews, even drafting their own addendum to the statewide Memorandum of Agreement Between Education and Law Enforcement Officials and distributing it to attendees before the meeting. School Board President David Routzahn said the board would look at the amendment, adding that "on the surface, it seems reasonable."

Carey said having uniformed officers question elementary school students is "the last thing I want." But he defended officers' right to conduct "fact-finding" interviews with students when the officers are called to school for serious incidents.

One parent recommended rehiring a school resource officer, a position that was eliminated in 2010, to handle all school incidents that may necessitate police. Maley said he and Routzahn had discussed reinstating the position, though "it's not done."

At issue also were the specifics of the events leading up to the meeting and the communications following it.

Officials retreated briefly into the finger-pointing that dominated statements from their departments before the prosecutor, district, and borough officials met July 5 and issued a joint statement accepting communal responsibility for the policy.

County Prosecutor Mary Eva Colalillo insisted that her office "did not and could not" issue a new directive, and other officials maintained that they had been instructed to report nearly all student incidents to police.

"Our takeaway from that meeting was that our discretion was more or less gone," Carey said.

Colalillo told those in the audience that her office had only intended during the May 25 meeting to reinforce the memorandum's provisions on reporting suspected child abuse or inappropriate relations between teachers and students, a claim school officials also disputed Tuesday night. She also said that an allegation of inappropriate behavior between a high school student and teacher had been investigated twice and deemed "unfounded."

Superintendent Scott Oswald said earlier this month that representatives from the Prosecutor's Office threatened school officials' teaching licenses if they did not follow the new directive - a claim the office has denied.

Officials stressed their commitment to the district's nearly 2,000 children.

"None of this has been good, none of this has been fun," Maley said at the close of the meeting, and so "it's critically important" to embrace the positive elements, including the establishment of a new parent advocacy group.

eplatoff@philly.com

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