Anabelle Jaramillo’s first and only encounter with the police officers in her Texas high school happened when she was accused of stealing a $13 classroom doorbell in 2024.
Anabelle, a 17-year-old honor student, told an assistant principal that she had accidentally knocked the bell loose, she said in an interview. Still, the administrator called the officers, who arrested the teen for theft. When Anabelle pulled away, the officers wrestled her onto her belly and handcuffed her.
The student, who is asthmatic and has panic attacks, gasped for air on the floor for three minutes, video footage shows.
Anabelle is among the thousands of students in Texas who have had physical encounters with school police officers in recent years. Many of these interactions have occurred since state lawmakers passed legislation in 2023 requiring an officer on each public school campus.
To understand how this initiative has played out, The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship collaborated with The San Antonio Express-News to examine thousands of pages of records describing use of force in schools. We also reviewed more than two dozen videos of police encounters on campuses and interviewed hundreds of students, educators, parents and officers.
Here are five takeaways from our reporting:
When it comes to school policing, Texas is different.
School districts across the United States have police officers assigned to their campuses. Most are employed by municipal police departments or sheriff’s offices. In Texas, however, nearly 400 of the state’s more than 1,000 public school districts have a different approach: Instead of tapping local police agencies for officers, they created their own departments.
School-district police departments are not unheard-of in other states, but typically only large school systems have them. In Texas, many small- and medium-size districts do, too.
The officers who work for these departments have the power to make arrests and usually carry firearms. Their chiefs report to the superintendent of schools.
After the 2022 massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas made a major investment in school officers.
The shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde left 19 students and 2 teachers dead. The grief was felt in every corner of the state and across the nation. A year later, lawmakers in Texas approved the legislation requiring an officer on every campus, saying it would help prevent similar tragedies.
After the law passed, annual spending on school security statewide increased to more than $1.3 billion from about $900 million. The number of officers trained to work in schools rose to more than 11,000 from about 8,000, an analysis of state police certification data shows.
In recent interviews, dozens of students, parents and educators said that they welcomed the presence of police in their schools. Many raised concerns about violent fights and school shootings.
School officers across Texas have used physical force on students thousands of times in recent years.
The state does not maintain an official count of use-of-force episodes in schools. But our reporters found that school officers across Texas used physical force at least 2,600 times from January 2022 through December 2025.
That number — which we calculated by requesting use-of-force data and records from hundreds of school districts and police agencies — is an undercount. Some districts and departments ignored our requests or declined to share the information. About 200 provided some data, but few of them provided comprehensive figures.
Officers used heavy-handed tactics in response to misbehavior or often minor misconduct.
A state law in Texas says that school districts should not assign officers to handle “routine student discipline.” But our reporters found that school officers grabbed, tackled and used Tasers or pepper spray on students in response to misconduct that often appeared to be minor.
We were able to obtain case-level records for more than 450 episodes in which officers had used physical force in schools. Many of them began over misbehavior such as swearing, vaping or schoolyard scraps. More than 100 times, students were left with bruises, scrapes or other injuries. About two dozen of the overall cases involved students in elementary school who were handcuffed or restrained in other ways.
Police chiefs told our reporters that force was sometimes necessary when students were likely to hurt themselves or others. One chief said his officers used force largely to restrain or redirect students.
Texas has embraced school policing without establishing a clear system of oversight and accountability.
Regulatory agencies in Texas do not have the power to routinely review school officers’ actions and weigh in on possible overreach. State officials said that school boards and police agencies were responsible.
But many school boards play limited roles in police matters. Two dozen board members from across Texas said they did not believe law enforcement oversight was within their purview. Additionally, many use-of-force policies used by school-district police departments lacked specific guidance on handling students.
Clare Amari is a reporter covering law enforcement in Texas schools as part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.
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