SAN ANTONIO — Texas school police have used pepper spray, physical strikes, and repeated taser shocks on students for minor infractions such as dress code violations, smoking, or playground fights, according to data collected between January 2022 and December 2025. More than 200 school districts provided records showing over 2,600 use-of-force incidents during that period.
Physical takedowns were used in approximately 60 incidents where students ignored commands, talked back, or walked away. Elementary school children, including one as young as 6 years old, have been handcuffed by school police. In the Judson Independent School District, which includes parts of San Antonio, a school officer threw a 15-year-old student into a table after the student threw a cheese stick at another student. The district stated the student had tried to move away from the officer, who used “the necessary force to control the situation.”
Statewide, Texas has nearly 400 school districts with their own police departments—more than all other U.S. states combined. Since the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, districts have spent billions assigning officers to every campus. However, no state agency is authorized to systematically review school police actions or assess misconduct, and a 2019 law intended to keep officers out of “routine student discipline” lacks definitions or enforcement mechanisms.
Charles Carnes, former police chief of the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, defended the use of physical force. “We can’t be indifferent and say, ‘Well, we’re in a school, and maybe we shouldn’t touch this student,’ and then get to a point where they hurt someone,” he said. School police in the San Antonio region have also confiscated dozens of weapons and prevented potential attacks, including after a March incident at a local middle school where a student shot a teacher before dying by suicide.
“You just have to watch TV. There’s not a school in the United States that shouldn’t have some kind of officer,” said LaTres Essien, a third-grade math teacher in Dallas.