To have fewer police on campus, LBUSD may give its safety officers power to cite, arrest students

Instead of calling local police any time a student is suspected of a crime, the Long Beach Unified School District may soon empower its in-house safety officers to handle low-level offenses.

At a school board meeting Wednesday, the district proposed allowing school safety officers, or SSOs, to cite and arrest students for small crimes. Under the plan, SSOs would refer cited students to an LBUSD diversion program. If students participate in diversion, their citations would be dismissed without ever being filed in court.

“We are looking to take over handling all infractions and misdemeanors that originate from our school sites,” Cameron Smith, the district’s director of school safety, said in a presentation to the board. This strategy would allow the district to maintain control over how t