When news came that the Minneapolis Public Schools proposed to cut ties with their local police force, local lawyer Tiffany Sizemore saw an opportunity for kids across the Pittsburgh Public Schools district.

So, Sizemore, who leads the Juvenile Defender Clinic at Duquesne University, alongside Jeff Shook, an associate professor of social work at the University of Pittsburgh, penned an open call for Pittsburgh Public Schools to stop using police to manage children in their schools.

In the wake of the death of George Floyd, a Minneapolis man who died May 25 after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, Minneapolis Public Schools terminated its contract with the Minneapolis Police Department in a unanimous school board vote in early June.

Pittsburgh Public Schools [PPS] has its own police force of about 20 officers, empowered to make arrests, though they aren’t authorized to carry firearms.

The school district does not formally have an agreement with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police that establishes how the departments coordinate, though steps were taken last year to formalize the roles.

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