Police Primer : Workshop Gives Youths, Adults a Taste of Mean Streets

The 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 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 cops, they got more than they bargained for.

Augustine, a student at Washington Irving Middle School, stared down Guadalupe Maciel, a student playing the party’s host.

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

Guadalupe shrugged. “So?”

Augustine was baffled. His classmates giggled.

Susanna and Augustine were two of nearly 600 seventh-graders from six Los Angeles area middle schools who met with 60 police officers Wednesday to get a taste of life as an officer. The event at the Los Angeles Convention Center was the capstone of a yearlong experimental civics curriculum called CityYouth, designed by the nonpartisan Constitutional Rights Foundation.

And while CityYouth worked to teach the students about police officers, The California Wellness Foundation separately worked on a plan to teach adults and children about urban violence against young people.

Saying that handguns kill more young people than disease, drugs or car crashes, the group will begin airing television commercials today in an effort to raise awareness of handgun violence, said Gary Yates, president and chief executive officer of the state Wellness Foundation.

“If we had found a new disease that had killed more California kids than any other cause, there would be a public outcry to do something about it,” Yates said. “And we think we’ve identified the disease. Handguns are killing more kids than anything else.”

At the Convention Center workshop, Sgt. Pat Connelly stepped in to give Augustine some advice. Tell them you can impound their radio if they don’t turn it down, he said. Tell her that she could spend six months in jail if charges were filed.

Augustine did.

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

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

The Wellness Foundation designed its new commercials as a sobering reminder of the dangers on the streets for police and kids. The spots, narrated by actor Ed Asner, will air in Los Angeles and Scramento.

In one spot, viewers will watch the mass production of handguns, while Asner ticks off the statistics: Every 20 seconds a new handgun is produced in this country. Ten children are killed by them every day. Every eight hours a young person commits suicide with one.

Another ad will show a car weaving down a road while Asner asks, “Do you know what the No. 1 killer of kids in California is?” The segment ends with the car wrapped around a tree and the young driver slumped over. There is a close-up of a bullet hole in the window.

“People are concerned about gun violence,” Yates said. “We want to let them know there’s something they can do.”

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The foundation planned a yearlong campaign costing $1 million to show its 30-second spots decrying handgun violence against young people and another $1 million for additional public information efforts.

“Do something,” viewers will be implored. The nonprofit group ends each of the segments with a phone number, 1-800-222-MANY, for more information on getting involved in local efforts to prevent violence.

In 1992, the state Wellness Foundation and other private groups allocated more than $30 million to a five-year project that aims to prevent violence. The group was created by law in 1992 when Health Net was converted from a nonprofit health maintenance organization to a for-profit HMO.