Walking a Mile in Their Shoes : Middle School Youths at Police Workshop Discover That It’s Not Easy to Be a Law Officer

The police officers went out on a routine call--a homeowner complaining that her neighbors’ party was too loud. Augustine Lorenzo and Susanna Ventura had seen all the movies. They’d had their training. They were ready. Or so they thought.

But these weren’t your average officers. Augustine and Susanna are both in seventh grade. And when they were forced to act as police officers in a workshop with actual officers, they got more than they bargained for.

Augustine, a student at Washington Irving Middle School in Mt. Washington, stared down Guadalupe Maciel, a student playing the owner of the site of the party.

“Turn the music down or I’ll take you to court,” Augustine said.

Guadalupe shrugged. “So?”

Augustine was baffled and silent as his classmates giggled.

Susanna and Augustine were two of nearly 600 seventh-graders from six Los Angeles middle schools who met with 60 police officers Wednesday in the Los Angeles Convention Center to get a taste of life as law enforcement officials. The day was the capstone of a yearlong experimental civics curriculum called CityYouth designed by the nonpartisan Constitutional Rights Foundation, an organization with the goal of teaching good citizenship to youths. The pilot program includes workshops and classes ranging from law to how to clean up graffiti.

Students such as Augustine found that being a police officer was tougher than they thought. Guadalupe refused to budge, despite Augustine’s repeated requests.

Sgt. Pat Connelly stepped in to give Augustine some advice. Tell her you can impound the radio if she doesn’t turn it down, he said. Tell her that she could spend six months in jail if charges are filed.

Augustine did.

“Damn,” Guadalupe said. “I’ll turn it down.”

Todd Clark, the executive director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation, said the day was designed to give students “an appreciation of how difficult it is to be a police officer in a city like this, and to give them (officers) an understanding of how difficult it is to grow up in a city like this.”

Senovita De La Torre of South Gate Middle School was one seventh-grader whose opinions changed after spending the day with police officers. Before, she said, she thought, “They’re pigs.” Now, she said, she knows that “they’re doing their job.”

Em Jai Jones, a student at Charles Maclay Middle School in Pacoima, said he knows people who don’t like police, but, he said, “police care about people.”

Many students seemed to share Senovita’s original views of police officers. A survey of the CityYouth students found that 38% had never had a friendly experience with the police.

“They treat you like you’re not a human being,” Edgar Soto of South Gate Middle School said.

Other students complained that police took too long to respond to calls, questioned youths just for wearing baggy clothes and were racist.

Sgt. Howard Yamamoto explained that police officers have to question people who look suspicious to do their jobs. “You know who I am because I wear a uniform,” he told a group of South Gate students. “I don’t know who you are.”

If Yamamoto sees youths dressed like gang members, he said, he has to be careful and question them. “That’s how we have to act so we can get home at night and not die,” he said.