NAACP Requests Records On Student Data Shared With Pasco Sheriff

PASCO COUNTY, FL — On Tuesday, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. filed a public records request with the Pasco County School District seeking information about the district’s participation in the Pasco County Sheriff's Office's Intelligence-Led Policing program.

The NAACP claims the school district is providing information on students to the sheriff's office, which uses an algorithm to predict which students are most likely to engage in criminal activity.

In its public records request, the NAACP has requested details of a three-year agreement the school district has with the sheriff's office to share information on students. The NAACP also wants specifics on what information is being shared.

LDF litigation fellow John Cusick contends that the sheriff's program he describes as predictive policing relies on the school district sharing confidential student records with the sheriff's office without notifying the students and their parents or guardians.

Cusick said students who meet certain criteria are then placed on an at-risk youth list used by the sheriff's office.

“Pasco County is weaponizing data and technology against its own youth within an educational system that is supposed to protect and nurture them, not criminalize them,” Cusick said. “The school district’s participation in a predictive policing program threatens to exacerbate long-standing racial disparities in discipline (in Pasco County schools), which have fueled the school-to-prison pipeline. This situation is untenable and transparency is a critical step forward.”

“There is no place for predictive policing technology in school settings,” said Clarence Okoh, LDF’s Equal Justice Works fellow. “Throughout the country, new policing technologies have heightened systemic discrimination against young people of color. Operating a school-based predictive policing program threatens educational equity and undermines the federal privacy rights of students of color as well as immigrant students, students with disabilities and other vulnerable children who are too often unduly targeted by police.”

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said his Intelligence-Led Policing program does nothing of the kind.

"ILP is not a futuristic, predictive model where people are arrested for crimes they have not yet committed," said Nocco in a rebuttal on the sheriff's office Facebook page. "Instead, the system is based soley on an individual’s criminal history. Multiple studies have shown that 6 percent of the population commit 60 percent of the crime and that is what this model focuses on. It is nameless, faceless, ageless, genderless and removes all identifying factors of an individual, except for their criminal history. This philosophy removes any chance of bias in law enforcement, which is something that should be celebrated."

Nocco said Intelligence-Led Policing is not a new approach to law enforcement and bears no resemblance to the 2002 movie, “Minority Report," in which futuristic police use predictive computer programs to stop crimes before they occur.

Noccco said ILP was started in England in the 1990s and is used by numerous law enforcement agencies throughout Tampa Bay.

"It works because it reduced residential burglaries in Pasco County by 74.4 percent since it was implemented in 2011 and it works because property crimes are down 35.6 percent in that same time period," he said.

He said the goal of the program is to identify and provide resources of those who have been arrested multiple times "and break the cycle of recidivism." (See Nocco discuss ILP in a Youtube video.)

Nevertheless, the complaints from the NAACP and other civil liberties groups have reached the ears of Florida legislators.

Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, has added an amendment to the so-called Parents' Bill of Rights legislation, Senate Bill 1634. The amendment would require parents to give their permission before schools share data with law enforcement

“Parents should have to affirmatively consent to allowing the school district to release their child’s grades to local law enforcement,” said Brandes.

State Rep. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, said she plans to add the amendment to the House version of the Parents' Bill of Rights she's sponsoring, House Bill 241.

“I do think whenever a child’s records are accessed by anyone, we do need to be involving parents,” said Grall.