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It’s no secret that the communication chasm between young African-Americans, especially males, and Kansas City police is as wide as the Grand Canyon. The tenuous relationship is played out on the streets every day.
So when both sides, teens and police, do get together to talk openly, the get-together can make for an interesting discussion. Last week, that’s what happened; 32 students from the first-ever Center School District alternative summer school program hung out at the Kansas City Police Department’s Regional Police Academy.
Of all the activities, the dialogue between students and police cadets was the most illuminating. After all, the cadets, in some cases, aren’t much older than the students.
The students’ line of questioning revealed their preoccupations. The cadets’ answers revealed their concerns.
“Are you afraid to kill anybody?” one of the students asked.
“Nobody wants to kill anyone,” answered Trinity Guyton, a Kansas City police cadet. “But that’s a part of the job if you have to save someone.”
Without delay, another question came.
“What did your friends say when you told them you wanted to be a police officer?”
Autumn Love, a cadet, said her friends were quite fickle when she told them the news.
“You have the friends that need you when you were just a plain person on the street,” Love said. “Now I have friends that don’t want to talk to me. They look at me in a different way. They blow me off. I’m a cop in their eyes. They don’t want to have anything to do with me.”
One young man had been itching to ask a question: “Have you ever been shot?”
None of the cadets had been shot, although a veteran of the Iraq war who is now a cadet had been shot at.
Just to keep sharp in case it ever does happen, Aaron Clark, a cadet, goes through a litany of mental scenarios.
“Yeah, I think about it every day,” Clark said. “They put us in scenarios that officers have experienced themselves. But they can’t do that with everything that can happen. So I try, in my mind, to come up with scenarios that are out of this world.
“But, yeah, you get nervous.”
Michael Buckley, another Kansas City cadet, said he never aspired to be a police officer. He got the bug by working at Worlds of Fun as a park ranger.
“You never know you’re made for something until you give it a shot,” Buckley said. “I didn’t want to be a cop at all. But I’ve fallen in love with it.
“Each of us could tell that story 35 different ways. Some of us grew up in a family of cops. Others hated cops.”
The session gave Michael Lopez, a senior who turned 19 last week, a different perspective on police.
“There were a lot of good questions and good answers,” Lopez said. “I liked it. Police officers aren’t that bad. Most people think they should solve all our problems. But they’re just like normal people.
“Of course, there are police who do wrong. But not all are wrong. And not all cops are bad.”
The discussion won’t start a sea change in the way many teens perceive police.
But at least both sides were talking rather than running from or after each other. It was the type of discussion that should be held regularly across the city.
A young person shouldn’t be in handcuffs and leaning over a squad car when he or she has that first frank chat with a police officer.
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