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Cops 101: NYC High School Teaches How To Behave During Stop-and-Frisk
HughPickens.com writes Kate Briquelet reports in the NY Post that Principal Mark Federman of East Side Community HS has invited the New York Civil Liberties Union to give a two-day training session to 450 students on interacting with police. "We're not going to candy-coat things — we have a problem in our city that's affecting young men of color and all of our students," says Federman.
"It's not about the police being bad. This isn't anti-police as much as it's pro-young people ... It's about what to do when kids are put in a position where they feel powerless and uncomfortable." The hourlong workshops — held in small classroom sessions during advisory periods — focused on the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program and how to exercise Fourth Amendment rights when being stopped and questioned in a car or at home.
Some law-enforcement experts say the NYCLU is going beyond civics lessons and doling out criminal-defense advice. "It's unlikely that a high school student would come away with any other conclusion than the police are a fearful group to be avoided at all costs," says Eugene O'Donnell, a former police officer and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. NYCLU representatives told kids to be polite and to keep their hands out of their pockets. But they also told students they don't have to show ID or consent to searches, that it's best to remain silent, and how to file a complaint against an officer. Candis Tolliver, NYCLU's associate director for advocacy, says was the first time she trained an entire high school. "This is not about teaching kids how to get away with a crime or being disrespectful. This is about making sure both sides are walking away from the situation safe and in control."
Some law-enforcement experts say the NYCLU is going beyond civics lessons and doling out criminal-defense advice. "It's unlikely that a high school student would come away with any other conclusion than the police are a fearful group to be avoided at all costs," says Eugene O'Donnell, a former police officer and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. NYCLU representatives told kids to be polite and to keep their hands out of their pockets. But they also told students they don't have to show ID or consent to searches, that it's best to remain silent, and how to file a complaint against an officer. Candis Tolliver, NYCLU's associate director for advocacy, says was the first time she trained an entire high school. "This is not about teaching kids how to get away with a crime or being disrespectful. This is about making sure both sides are walking away from the situation safe and in control."
How not to get your @ass kicked when you get pulled over by the police - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Advice I got from a cop: Most cops are great guys and a few are psychopaths with guns. The best place to fight it out is in court where they won't be able to shoot you and get away with it ;)
There are a good deal of "common sense" things that haven't seemed to soak into younger generations. Things that someone born in the 70's, 80's and 90's would likely have been exposed to and had been "taught" to some degree or another. The Police force has changed. The same cop may not patrol the same neighborhood 4 or 5 days a week. When they did, they got to know the neighborhood. They knew it's people, who "belonged" there and who didn't. Many lived not-too-far away and lived in a similar neighborhood. The Police and the people understood one another, had common ground. It seems that balance has changed.
If it's not going to go back to something like that, then our youth probably do need to be "taught" how to interact with these authority figures who aren't from their neighborhood, don't know them from the drug-dealer down the street. Until we sort out how to make the Police more local to any place it protects, make them feel like neighbors, then we're not doing the right thing unless we teach the youth how to properly interact with Police, without disrespect for either party. Remember: In the same way a Fireman runs into a burning building; this Officer is going to be running towards the gunfire if there's trouble, not away from it like the average youth on the street.
Bottom Line: If our Police aren't going to also be our neighbors, in our neighborhoods, then we need to re-learn out how interact with them.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
The more productive method would probably be external oversight that actually has teeth instead of internal wrist slapping followed by a high five.
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I really don't understand how you can come to this conclusion without harboring some seriously racist ideas yourself. Unarmed black kids are getting killed by the police all over the country. That is not an acceptable outcome. The school can't fix the interaction from the side of the police officers, but they can teach kids how to respond in those situations so that the risk is minimized. How can that be anything but good?
Some law-enforcement experts say the NYCLU is going beyond civics lessons and doling out criminal-defense advice.
So wait, we're assuming that they're all criminals to begin with?
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
You gain not being shot or tazed, hopefully.
A lot of us do. More than you would guess.
"If your rights are violated you deal with it later"
What exactly do you gain by consenting to an illegal request of a power they do not have?
Not get killed? Live for another day where you can fight for legal remedy, and hopefully create a legal precedent that will prevent such violations in the future?
Subservience only reinforces their grandstanding and power playing.
This is all bravado from your part. Until you have actually dealt with situations like that, face to face, you ought to temper it and think a little.
There are moments in life when it is appropriate to disobey a law and deal with the consequences (see Rosa Park or Gandhi, or recently Arnold Abbott).
This is specially true if violations of your rights (or your "violation" of an unjust law) is done in public, to bring awareness to a just cause. This is particularly true when violations are the manifestation of egregious institutions (colonialism, institutionalized racism, to less diabolical but still egregious ones such as laws preventing feeding of homeless.
Here, you, the generic "you", are full aware of it, and you have a made a decision to take the hit for a greater cause. On the other hand, there are times to play possum, in particular if violation of your rights just happen because you are there on the wrong time, being incidental of you just being you, without you planning to take the hit for a greater cause.
You coming from an event and getting arrested because "you" look the profile, or getting handcuffed while picking up your kids because you look suspicious, even when teachers are vouching for you. Etc, etc.
In such cases when you are just living your daily life, play possum, litigate later. This is specially true when you have family that depends on you.
Telling other people to go martyr just because it sounds good and right, that's just unhelpful bravado. This has nothing to do with doing the right thing, but everything to do with making a post where you sound brave and rightful.
Ignorance of the law on the side of the police is not an excuse, just as ignorance of law among a civilian is no excuse.
None of that justifies telling other people to escalate things when in a position of vulnerability. This is not a comic book, and you are not GI Joe.
Learn to pick your battles, and you pick them, learn how to fight and win them.
I had parents, I'm white, have a graduate degree, make six figures. I think of the police as mother-fucking-pigs because they are they enforcement side of the Constitution destroying political regime we have. While I realize that I'm not their prime target -- at this point in time -- that doesn't make the police nice or moral people. I see the racial bias stuff as nothing more than the pigs practicing for full on police state, at which point everyone will be a target.
What will cause attitudes toward these assholes to change is when the police stop using SWAT to bust up home poker games, give up the military equipment, and start trying to _serve_ their community rather looking at us like enemies. The problem starts with the cops and the changes have to start in the pig stye.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
As some others have said in more colorful ways, being a good cop means doing everything you can under the law to get bad cops off the street. Bad cops doesn't just mean those taking bribes, planting evidence, etc. Bad cops includes police officers who unnecessarily approach situations with undue aggression and who unnecessarily escalate situations. I understand that much of an officer's interactions are either with people who aren't at their best or are with people who are just pain rotten to the core, but if that drives them into a pattern of cynicism and aggression not warranted by the situation, they can either self-report and get behind a desk and get counseling until their head gets back to a better place or they're bad cops.
I'm a law-abiding citizen. Minus some exceeding the posted speed limit here and there, I'm not causing trouble. I also happen to work late quite a bit, which has led to numerous interactions with the police. Nearly all of those have been completely reasonable where everyone was decent and the situation was handled without any issue (usually just a "why are you here at [late time]?" followed up with a reasonable explanation, maybe running plates, in and out in 3 minutes kind of thing). In a very small number of cases, I was met by an adrenaline-pumped idiot who was very obviously itching to rip me out of the car and beat the Hell out of me. I've been berated and goaded by a cop who was doing everything he could to escalate the situation to where he could take stronger action. As I said, it's a very tiny number of issues out of all the times I've had contact with officers and I've always kept my cool and been in the right to the point where it didn't turn into anything. But all it would take is one of those adrenaline-pumped alpha assholes deciding I looked at him wrong and but for a camera recording the incident, he could very easily write up the report such that I was the aggressor and was threatening toward him and resisted arrest, thereby justifying any injuries. With that report and the word of the sworn officer, I end up with a criminal record and losing everything I've earned in life.
And that's why it doesn't matter if there are 99 good cops for every one bad cop. Because that one bad cop can ruin so many peoples' lives. We as citizens are second-class when we file a report or step into a court room trying to stop a bad cop doing bad stuff. What's really needed are for all those cops who are decent people to start standing up against the ones who aren't, start calling them on their bullshit, start reporting them at work, and start testifying on behalf of people who are wronged by them. I understand that that hyper-aggressive adrenaline junky alpha asshole is great to have by your side when you're under fire, but you have a duty and a responsibility to either see that he gets right in the head or see that he finds a new profession where he doesn't have any legal authority. The more you protect assholes like that, the more of them you'll find around you and the more the citizens in your community will distrust and even hate the police.
I support the good cops out there trying to help good and decent people and do the right thing. As for the bad cops out for a thrill? Well at the very very least, I want them off the streets and getting help. Stop protecting them. Stop protecting people who protect them.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."