“Oh, please don’t do that,” I plead silently under my breath as a promised protector — my classmates’ and promised protector, the police officer stationed at our school to keep us safe — tackled and swept another young person just my age across the floor in the very classroom I shared with them.
Courtesy of A’Miracle Williams
A’Miracle Williams
Too afraid and in shock to speak up, I sat by and watched as the school resource officer attempted to pull a misbehaving student out of class. It was almost as if I was agreeing to and condoning the behavior by not speaking up. But who was really to blame? The “protector,” or the students who were supposed to be protected but were instead endangered?
I could hear the clicks of the handcuffs and my classmate wailing. They hadn’t resisted the officer’s request in such a terrible way that they had needed to be treated like that. The anger, vengeance, demanding of the officer was the lighter that lit the bud in my stomach. The bud that always quickly flourished from nervousness to full-on anxiety. I wanted nothing more than to be home, out of this situation. I felt that only in America, and only ever were people of my skin color targeted and treated this way.
I’ve always felt that authoritative forces such as police officers were intimidating and threatening. And not only because of the things I’ve seen them do, but also because of the things I knew they could do. It isn’t normal nor should it be normalized. You can feel the hostility of when someone doesn’t care for you, but you can see it ten times clearer in their actions. In a system designed for Blacks and people of color to fail, the level of racism in schools, communities, and elsewhere does not at all surprise me at the age of seventeen now. I’ve become desensitized to it, except I’m no longer silenced.
What’s highly at stake is the safety of our children. I must make change. It’s in my name. We must advocate, whether we die doing so or only make it halfway or a quarter there. We have the power; we have the togetherness and the voices to make change. We only have to want it bad enough.
This is my advice to school resource officers and police officers in general:
If you want us to not see all law enforcement officers as threatening, first establish a connection, one that shows understanding and compassion, love and acceptance. Equity and Equality. Many of us lack these in our home life and could use it from wherever. But if you build the correct foundation, one centered around integrity, empathy, respect, patience, fairness, and honesty, it shall be reciprocated from youth as learned behavior.
“Evaluate before you penetrate. The youth needs you.”
People don’t care about how much you know, until they know how much you care. Many of us already admire and are inspired by police officers, firefighters, paramedics, governors, etc. We know your position. Please do not attack us, but why not use our inspiration and admiration to your advantage instead? Lend us a lecture or two about your position, your life story. What it took for you to get where you are today. Educate us. You could change the right kid’s life with just words. Those words would show you care.
You want school communities to feel safer and more welcoming? Well, evaluate who you’re hiring in these resource officer positions. Give these people the correct training and not just guns. Go back to their childhoods, do research, evaluate them.
As a resource officer, build bonds with these young people you are around every single day! Ask us what we like to eat, our hobbies, our life goals and paths. Buy us lunch once in a while. Show us that you care, and don’t sit on our backs. Love the youth and care for us because we are the next generation. We will age and hold important decision-making positions someday. We will grow and remember these experiences and carry these situations and trauma with us through adulthood. Don’t sabotage our country’s future through your misuse of power.
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A’Miracle Williams is a New Orleans-based writer and advocate. She is a 2023 graduate of New Harmony High School and will be attending Grambling State University to major in psychology and minor in creative writing. She’s written and published two books with 826 New Orleans, a youth writing center, already and looks forward to her future as an author.