City police seek to ease tensions between youth and officers
“Oh, they got a gun. I’m about to start shooting!” That’s 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 at the Pittsburgh Public Schools’ 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 switched roles 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 center’s library was packed Friday, loud with laughter and jokes, as several students, officers and police officials from various zones came together for a 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 and officers met 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 nine times out of 10 I’d just walk away.”
Police shootings — often a white officer shooting a black teen — have sparked protests nationwide. That was the case last year in the Pittsburgh region, with the shooting of 17-year-old Antwon Rose II. He was killed June 19 by former East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld, who now faces a homicide charge and will be tried beginning 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 the fall of 2017, conducting them 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 there.
“A lot of times people think bad kids are here,” said Ms. Walker, who has been working in the 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.”
“It’s about not passing judgment on the community member or the officer that’s involved,” Cmdr. Lando said. “Sometimes one is right, and sometimes the other is right, but the point is, we’ll never get past the problems until we get to know each other.”
For Michael Williams, the engagement helped change his view of police officers, he said.
“I liked it, I really liked it,” he said. “It’s like I got a different view on the average cop. At first it’s like, I know they’re cops, so I need to make sure I’m not looking suspicious and everything like that. But now, I’m like, oh, they’re just an ordinary person, but with authority.”