Youths sound off on abusive officers
U.S. attorney general at Richmond center
Cops who treat city kids with respect instead of an iron hand are too few and far between, a handful of Richmond youths told the U.S. attorney general on Friday.
And Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who said she had come to Richmond to listen, sat quietly and listened.
The meeting inside the RYSE Youth Center in central Richmond, a former trash-collection office turned into a recreation and training center for hundreds of kids, was unlike most of those on Lynch’s agenda. Ten young people sat in a circle and sounded off about the police officers they encountered in their schools and on the streets.
Jennifer Duenas recalled how daily
contact with the police at Richmond High School left her intimidated.
“I remember every morning walking into school and seeing them, and they had power over me, and I felt so inferior and so scared,” she said.
Her friend, Gemikia Henderson, told Lynch there was one officer at the school who tried to help her and encourage her in her studies.
“What was different about him?” Lynch asked.
“He cared,” Henderson replied. “He was a cool dude. You didn’t see him as a uniform because he saw you as a person.”
Lynch, the first black woman to serve as attorney general, told the youths she was touring the country to find out how to recruit the kind of officers that communities are looking for.
“It’s important that the police see you as people and not, initially, as a problem,” Lynch said. “We want to make sure we are accountable to the people rather than the people accountable to us.”
Francisco Rojas, another RYSE youth, said constantly seeing police at school “just shapes your day.” His friend, Jose Esquivel, told the attorney general that his parents had “taught me to be vigilant (and) scared around police.”
“The police around here are not like the police you see on TV,” Esquivel said. “They don’t give you stickers or pencils. They ask you where you’re going, what you’re doing, why you’re wearing this or that.”
Lynch briefly toured the center, admiring the foosball table and the art and recording studios. She also paused at a poster depicting the history of the Black Panther movement.
“I like your Panther poster,” said Lynch, a statement that has passed the lips of few, if any, U.S. attorneys general.