What a School Board Sacking Reveals about Police in BC Schools

[Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include new information.]

On Jan. 30, B.C. Education and Child Care Minister Lisa Beare fired the Greater Victoria district’s school board and replaced them with appointed trustee Sherri Bell, a former Victoria district superintendent.

Why? Because, Beare said, the board had failed to work with police, First Nations, the wider community and eventually a government-appointed special adviser to create an adequate district safety plan, after they cancelled their police school liaison officer program in 2023.

The now-fired board’s most recent safety plan draft is still posted to its website. Moreover, the board had maintained that police were still welcome in schools for safety presentations, school events and emergency responses.

Now-former school board chair Nicole Duncan declined an interview with The Tyee but shared a brief media statement released via email by the nine former trustees. The statement called the board’s firing “extremely disappointing and profoundly undemocratic.”

In an emailed press release issued on April 2, the now former board of trustees announced they were seeking a judicial review of their firing in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

"At issue in the judicial review is whether the government had the jurisdiction and authority to dismiss a democratically elected Board of Education over this issue, and to force a School Board to adopt unwanted local policy against its wishes, or whether those are squarely the type of decisions that the legislation asks the Board to make," the statement reads in part.

B.C. human rights commissioner Kasari Govender responded to the board’s firing in an open letter to Beare, stating that firing trustees over a safety plan issue, in essence, makes school liaison officer programs mandatory in B.C. schools.

In a February interview with The Tyee, Beare denied this, noting the program has not been reinstated in the Greater Victoria district.

She said when it comes to school liaison officer programs, “every single district is different.”

“But the key to these relationships and these programs is that they’re community-led,” she added.

As controversial as the former school liaison officer, or SLO, program was in the Victoria district, its cancellation was just as contentious.

The board cited the lack of Victoria Police Department involvement in the program, as well as the negative impact police in schools can have on marginalized students, as their reasons for cancelling the program.

But, similar to what happened in Vancouver, the pushback was immediate — from police, but also from two First Nations and a grassroots group claiming to represent 2,000 parents in the district.

As contentious and high-stakes as this issue has been — serious enough to fire an entire democratically elected school board over — it’s been difficult to get the key actors on the record about the board’s firing, or find evidence police in schools are necessary to keep children safe when the province refuses to study SLO programs’ efficacy or establish metrics for success.

So in this piece, The Tyee looks at the police evidence bolstering calls for officers to return to the Greater Victoria School District, and the similarities to criticisms of and questions about Vancouver’s ongoing SLO program.

Allegations of youth gang involvement — but no hard facts

Prior to 2018, four police bodies were involved in Victoria’s SLO program, including the RCMP and the Oak Bay, Saanich and Victoria police departments.

The Victoria Police Department voluntarily pulled its officers and funding out of Victoria’s SLO program in 2018 due to budget issues.

Despite that, the Victoria Police Department was in 2024 among the critics calling for the reinstatement of the program in schools, citing local youth involvement with gangs as a reason for its return.

According to the Ministry of Education and Child Care, data from the Oak Bay and Saanich police departments, alongside anecdotal reports from students, parents and school staff, establishes the connection between schools and gangs.

Saanich police, who cover an area that includes 26 district schools, reported an uptick in the number of files including the phrases “Brothers Keepers AND school,” “Glory Boys AND school” and “gangs AND schools” since the district cancelled its SLO program.

Files referencing schools included private and public schools, as well as post-secondary institutions, Saanich police noted in a letter to then-board chair Nicole Duncan. Plus mentions of schools “may be unconnected to the gang activity referenced as this query only looked for the word ‘school’ in the same text,” the letter read.

The force’s major crimes unit was also involved in 35 gang investigations related to Saanich schools from mid-2022 to September 2024. The results of these investigations, some of which were still before the courts last fall, were not disclosed.

“More than 10 youths were identified as being involved in gang activity associated with schools” between mid-2022 and September 2024, the department’s Sept. 4, 2024, letter to the district read. Crimes alleged included assault with a weapon, assault, harassment, theft, break and enter and drug trafficking.

The Oak Bay Police Department, which covers three district schools, reported one file in 2015 and two in 2023 relating to gang recruitment and/or criminal activity and youth.

The problem? For the 26 schools covered by Saanich’s police department, the number of files mentioning “gangs AND schools” was significantly higher from 2017 to 2019, when Saanich officers were still in schools, than it was in 2023, the last full calendar year measured. The SLO program was cancelled in May 2023.

Both the former board and Govender point out that the data shared by the Saanich and Oak Bay police departments doesn’t clearly or conclusively establish that youth gang involvement increases when police officers aren’t regularly visiting schools.

When asked about criticism of the data, Beare told The Tyee the increase in safety concerns in the district’s schools came from anecdotal reports from police, principals, students, school staff, teachers and parents — rather than conclusive, quantitative data.

Arguments for and against police in schools

Racism in the criminal justice system is a well-documented issue across Canada and British Columbia.

In 2018, Vancouver police data showed the department disproportionately stopped Black people and Indigenous people to request their identification.

Critics of SLO programs point out that these same biases appear when officers are placed in schools.

Many Black and Indigenous people spoke out against the SLO program in Vancouver schools in 2021 and 2022, for example, referencing negative interactions with both school liaison officers and police in general.

For some Indigenous parents in particular, the history of police involvement in genocide, from removing Indigenous children from their families to attend residential schools to assisting in the ongoing, disproportionate apprehension of Indigenous children into government care, was cited.

“Two-thirds of our Indigenous families live in urban settings. These are students with blood memory of this history, who are in this district,” Marjorie Dumont, vice-president of the Vancouver Elementary and Adult Educators’ Society, told the Vancouver School Board in 2022.

But in Victoria, both the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, whose territories the district operates in, have said the school board did not adequately consult them before cancelling the program.

In a letter to Beare, the nations’ leaders expressed particular support for Indigenous police liaison officer Cole Brewer, who had worked in schools before the program’s cancellation.

The Songhees Nation also supported Beare’s decision to fire the board. A Tyee request to interview Chief Ron Sam did not receive a response.

Chief Councillor Jerome Thomas of the Esquimalt Nation responded to The Tyee’s questions by email, saying the nation’s support of school liaison officers wasn’t just about Brewer.

“Esquimalt Nation supported the program because it ensured that interactions between law enforcement and students were rooted in relationship, understanding, and cultural awareness,” Thomas’s email read.

“The liaison officer was not just an enforcement figure but a bridge between the school system, law enforcement, and our community. They provided mentorship, guidance, and proactive support in de-escalating conflicts, addressing safety concerns, and ensuring that students felt seen and heard.”

The liaison officer played a key role of trust-building between youth, their families and the wider Esquimalt communities, he added, as well as allowing for problem-solving to happen before the wider police force got involved.

Asked if the Victoria Police Department’s recently released data showing officers’ disproportionate use of force against Black people and Indigenous people impacted the nation’s view of police in schools, Thomas said it did not.

“We reinforce the need for carefully structured, community informed, and culturally safe policing initiatives,” his email read.

Parent Lori Poppe, a member of the online Facebook group SD61, 62 & 63 Safety Concerns, formerly known as Parents and Police Together, told The Tyee she didn’t feel the need for the school police liaison officer program until it was removed.

“All the trainings that SPLOs would give were not being done by anyone else,” said Poppe, adding the district promised such training would be covered but did not respond to her request for more details.

This included Halloween safety training, which Poppe noticed was lacking in her neighbourhood last fall when kids and parents wore dark clothing while trick-or-treating, making them almost invisible to cars.

“I am not someone that’s married to a school liaison officer program,” said Poppe, adding she agreed with the special adviser’s report finding that the previous board did not adequately consult with or consider stakeholders’ input on a district safety plan.

“What I expect is that there is going to be communication, a relationship, police will be allowed to come to school in their uniform, without having to get permission.”

Back in Vancouver, newly elected school board trustee Preeti Faridkot expressed her belief during a November 2022 board meeting that racism in the justice system cannot be defeated by ending police presence in schools.

“Institutions will continue to exist,” she said. “Instead of creating separation and instead of dividing our communities, let’s try to build bridges and understanding to foster positive relationship between communities and other institutions.”

Vancouver’s SLO program was voted back into place at that November 2022 meeting.

In March 2024, the Vancouver Police Department’s African Descent Advisory Committee cut ties with the department, citing a lack of respect from the police force, including in their decision to bring back the SLO program without consulting the committee.

Cherry-picked police call data, false claims of ‘special training’

Getting accurate information about officer training, officer’s identities and the data Vancouver police used to justify returning officers to schools has been difficult. In Vancouver, the VPD doesn’t make the identities of officers working as SLOs publicly available — meaning students and parents may be left unaware that their school’s liaison officer was previously implicated in a police-involved homicide or had faced disciplinary proceedings.

In October 2022, The Tyee asked the Vancouver Police Department for data on SLO metrics, including but not limited to how many criminal investigations SLOs had conducted and the number of young people charged after SLO investigations under the previous program. The VPD declined to share the data.

“It would be naive to suggest the impact of the program can be measured through arrest data,” media relations officer Sgt. Steve Addison told The Tyee via email in October 2022.

But the VPD did send that info to the school district. Then-Vancouver School Board vice-chair Faridkot publicly shared it during a November 2022 school board meeting: between 2015 and 2019, SLOs recorded 7,025 encounters with youth in public and private Vancouver schools.

Twenty-one students, including three Indigenous youth and two Black youth, were eventually charged with crimes.

In January 2023, The Tyee reported that VPD and district staff statements about former SLOs having “special training” to work in schools were false.

In November 2023, The Tyee reported that call data cited by Vancouver police to claim youth crime had increased without the presence of police in schools had been cherry-picked, hiding that calls to police from high schools had been much higher under the previous SLO program than during the one full school year — 2022 — without police in schools.

While the 480 calls from secondary schools made in 2022 were higher than the 414 calls from secondary schools made to police in 2021, they were much lower than the 505 calls made from secondary schools in 2020; 727 calls in 2019; 902 calls in 2018; and 1,222 calls in 2017 — all years that school liaison officers were stationed in Vancouver secondary schools.

Both the information about “special training” and the information about call data were disclosed via freedom of information requests made by The Tyee.

In a further December 2023 request, The Tyee asked for more information about the call data, including how many times police were deployed and what time the calls came through.

That information was finally released to us in February 2025, over a year later, only after we made a complaint to the B.C. Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

We now know that between Jan. 1, 2015, and June 30, 2023, police were dispatched 6,162 times out of the 7,040 calls made to the department from school district addresses. The majority of those calls came during school hours.

Another December 2023 freedom of information request The Tyee made for training materials for the new school liaison officer program did not receive a response until April 2024, again only after we complained to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner.

The Vancouver Police Department did send us a list of the courses school liaison officers are now required to take, though the length and content of the courses were not included.

According to the memorandum of understanding signed by the Vancouver Police Department and the Vancouver School Board, an independent third party will review the program in its second year, which starts this coming September.

In September 2023, then-deputy superintendent David Nelson stated publicly the review would focus on aspects of the program that were and were not working.

“Certainly we'd want to engage some academics and individuals who could have a more objective perspective and share information,” he said.

Nelson added there would be an annual internal student survey, too.

In an email to The Tyee, a district communications staffer told us the third-party review was still in its early planning stages.

The district did not respond to questions about whether the annual student surveys have been conducted or if their results would be made public.

BC won’t study the efficacy of SLO programs

B.C. human rights commissioner Govender says research from other jurisdictions, compiled in a 2021 review her office funded, shows that SLO programs with an emphasis on police building relationships with students “tend to be the more problematic.”

The review notes placing officers in schools gives law enforcement officials increased access to and surveillance of students, which can “increase opportunities for legally punitive measures involving school violations.”

This is particularly true for research on U.S. SLO programs — which is more fulsome than research on Canadian programs — that found a disproportionate level of school discipline, as well as arrests, of Black students and disabled students in schools with SLOs.

In an interview with The Tyee, Govender doubled down on her call for the province to study SLO programs in B.C., centring the experiences and input of marginalized students and their families.

But Beare told The Tyee the province won’t study the effectiveness of school liaison officer programs. That’s because every district’s proactive approach to their relationship with police is different and driven by conversations with their community, she said.

“If there are those concerns, they’re being addressed at the community level,” she added.

While Govender isn’t asking for the abolition of SLO programs, she said there must be evidence that the programs are not harming any students and that there is a causal link between police presence in schools and increased student safety.

Aside from the promised third-party review of Vancouver’s SLO program, Govender is not aware of any evaluation mechanisms for SLO programs to show they are the best method for keeping students safe and meeting “the desired outcomes,” or that they don’t cause students harm.

“We all want to keep our young people safe,” she said. “Where programs are being justified, there’s not research or data that’s being used to support that.”

All B.C. school districts’ codes of conduct reference the B.C. Human Rights Code, which is incompatible with a refusal to study the SLO programs with an aim to find evidence that they work and are not harmful to marginalized people, Govender said.

“If we don’t base our policies and decision-making on the real facts, we risk implementing policies that are based on stereotype and bias. And that’s how systemic discrimination perpetuates itself,” Govender said.

“It’s only in studying the impact, through evidence, through data, through research, that we can understand if this program is a good thing or not.”