All the students were excited, but the older students were shrewder, seeming particularly keen on weighing the truth, asking questions and coming to a fair conclusion. For a generation of students who came of age since public school security was put under NYPD management a decade ago, bringing uniformed officers into their lives every day, the line between maintaining safety and enforcing discipline is an important one. On Nov. 23, an estimated 200 young people rallied at City Hall in support of the Student Safety Act – a bill introduced into City Council in August that would increase oversight of school safety agents. Without its passage, the bill’s advocates maintain, incidents like those alleged recently – one student handcuffed for writing on her desk, another sustaining minor injuries from aggressive agents – are likely to remain unchecked by any systemic protocol for the time being. “Children are much more likely to get arrested for disciplinary problems," says Udi Ofer, advocacy director at the New York Civil Liberties Union, a primary sponsor of the bill. "What was once a trip to the principal’s office is now a trip downtown.”
According to Morales of The Door, successfully interacting with safety agents and police officers is a two-way street. There needs to be more youth development, but officers also must take a more "progressive" approach, she said.
A focus on the particular needs of adolescents already is part of standard training for police recruits, according to Sgt. Fernando Henriquez, an NYPD academy instructor who has been with the force for 10 years. During the six-month training period that all police officers undergo, recruits take a nine-hour course on specific circumstances around dealing with juveniles, including addressing special needs, effective behavior, and points of law, in addition to the study of constitutional law and the Bill of Rights. According to NYCLU’s Ofer, school safety agents receive different training, undergoing 14 weeks of instruction before reporting for duty. In an e-mail, Henriquez offered some additional guidance: "If a youth is questioned or apprehended by the police, my best advice would be to comply with an officer's directions. Youths must realize that the police have a difficult job to do. After the incident, the juvenile can ask for a clarification of the encounter, if necessary."
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Between seminars like the one at The Door, the NYCLU's popular legal information pocket cards, and debate around the issues motivating the Student Safety Act, plenty of efforts are afoot to empower and educate the city’s youth on their legal rights and how to act when confronted by police officers.
“They gotta be street smart,” seminar participant Papis said of his peers, subtly adding book learning to the usual meaning of that term. In the moment when doing or saying the right thing could defuse a potential problem, he said: “They need to know."
