Maybe it stems from action movies or maybe from major news events of the past year, but it has become all too easy to view uniformed officers as the villains. Yes, those white Stormtrooper costumes are a bit of a red flag that you’d best pull out your blaster, but when it comes to ordinary police officers, we are too quick to forget that those black uniforms protect humans, not clones.
As public servants, the police exist to protect us, a goal that we must keep in mind when we see them walking around campus.
Admittedly, this presence has felt a bit odd, and we, as an editorial board, were concerned that a heightened police presence on campus would exacerbate tensions between high schoolers and authority figures. There was no evident need for increased safety on campus nor was there a publicized explanation for the police presence.
Wanting more information and dialogue about the increased police presence at PHS, we sat down with police chief Rikki Goede, who explained that the police officers are here to strengthen relationships, not jeopardize them.
Goede believes that the Piedmont Police should recognize students and know them by name. Before taking over at the Piedmont Police Department, she worked in middle and high schools in San Jose, answering students’ questions and acting as a liaison between the teenagers and the law.
Within the next few years, Goede hope to create a new position, a school resource officer who would share time between PHS, MHS and PMS. This model holds the potential to cultivate police relationships that support students rather than target them, and Goede’s steps toward it have been admirable.
By increasing the visibility of the police and promoting interactions with high school students, Piedmont has an opportunity to promote community policing. Community policing is a practice through which the police and the community share a trusting relationship and open communication, according to the US Department of Justice website. This relationship keeps the public safer and more comfortable because people know the police and see them as allies.
Even though violent crime rates in Piedmont are extremely low, there is still a need to bridge the divide between high schooler students and the police.
As young people, we tend to believe that the police are out to get us, rolling our parties and ticketing us for not making a full stop. To Goede, however, the goal of policing is safety, not punishment.
Yet biases run both ways. As Goede pointed out, some officers may not be comfortable interacting with teenagers, and others might be downright rude. If you had one bad encounter, don’t hold it against other police officers you meet. Instead, respect their common purpose: to protect and serve.
Ultimately, the goal of policing is not to spoil the party but to make sure that everyone gets home safely.
