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Hands down, let's talk: City police seek to ease tensions between youth, officers
“Oh, they got a gun, I’m about to start shooting!” This is how Michael Williams, 17, thinks police may respond when they feel threatened, or at least how he acted out their potential response in a role reversal exercise Friday, during a youth engagement session at the Pittsburgh Public School’s Student Achievement Center in Homewood.
“That is very realistic how that could have played out in real life,” said Pittsburgh police Cmdr. Jason Lando of Zone 5, after a few students and officers pretended to be one another in an exercise to display their perceptions of one another. “Sometimes we are tempted to just look at people and feel a certain way, and not even know who they are,” he said.
The library was packed Friday, loud with laughter and jokes, as several students, officers and police officials from various zones came together for one common goal — connecting — and of course, food.
The two-hour session sought to build relationships and break down barriers between the city's youth and police officers, Cmdr. Lando said. Before the role reversal exercise, students grouped together with officers for 30 minutes to discuss opinions and feelings about police tensions.
“I’ve had bad encounters with police that would either lead to me getting arrested, or I would just walk away,” Michael said of his previous encounters with police. “But 9 times out of 10 I’d just walk away.”
Police shootings — often a white officer shooting a black teen — have sparked protests all over, and recently in Pittsburgh, with the shooting death of 17-year-old Antwon Rose II, who was killed on June 19 by former East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld. He is facing one charge of murder, pending a trial that begins Tuesday.
“I didn’t like what I was seeing all over the country with the constant tension between the young people and police, and we just thought this was a good thing to do,” Cmdr. Lando said. “We know that most cops are good, and we know most kids are good, but it’s not until you get to know each other on a personal level that you get like, ‘Oh, you really are cool.’”
Cmdr. Lando started the youth engagement sessions in Fall 2017, conducting the sessions once or twice a month, he said. He has recently formalized partnerships with the Student Achievement Center and the Garfield Jubilee Association.
“I think that’s a conversation that could take weeks; there are so many things,” Cmdr. Lando said of the tension between youth and police. “There’s the historical piece, and then there’s these things that are playing out all over the news.”
Sometimes the kids at the Student Achievement Center are seen in a negative light, according to Ruth Walker, student services assistant and activities coordinator at the center.
“A lot of times people think bad kids are here,” said Ms. Walker who has been working in Pittsburgh Public Schools for almost 24 years. “But a lot of the time they come here for the [school credit] recovery program. I absolutely love this school because you get to do things with the students.”
Read more at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Hands down, let's talk: City police seek to ease tensions between youth, officers