"C'mon, baby... who ya gonna believe..."

"...Stephanie Payne... OR... your lyin eyes?"

Some schools, moreover, wanted no part of the program, including North York's C.W. Jefferys Collegiate, site of the fatal 2007 shooting of 15-year-old Jordan Manners that was the genesis of that school-safety report. By a narrow margin, parents decided a police presence might create more problems than it solved.

But data from the 22 public schools where officers were placed show a 17-per-cent decline in student suspensions during the past semester, compared with a year earlier, and a 16-per-cent drop in criminal charges.

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