Assignment: Diversionary Strategies

STUDENT REPLIES

CLASS QUESTION: To what degree do media portrayals of juvenile/police relationships reflect your professional or personal experience?

STUDENT REPLY 1# Lavinia Grimm

In my personal life, the way media portrays the relationship between juveniles and the police has significantly impacted me. As a child growing up in a tiny town, our local news was from the bigger city. Everything I viewed was how the street gangs full of juvenile delinquent children running from the cops, creating massive chaos throughout town, drive-by shooting, etc. Media would show children in gangs, wearing baggy pants, bandanna on their head, and of them all standing on the street corners yelling profanities that they bleeped out. That was my impression most of my life; any time I saw children on the streets, they were gang members, street thugs, or criminally bad kids. My entire childhood was affected by the violence the media reported between youth and police, to a point my father moved our family away from the closest city to the most secluded town until all of us children had graduated. Even though my opinion changed after growing up and eventually working in the criminal justice department and juvenile courts, my opinion has changed, even though media still plays a part in the swaying of public views of juveniles and police relationships as very hostile and aggressive.

In my professional life, our local media does a great job at showing the great things the police and juvenile do for the community together in our little town. The relationship between the two has a solid foundation and continues to grow. A couple of years ago, we had spikes in juvenile arrest in the highland areas. Community Policing, parents, and our local media helped build a stronger alliance in that area and have seen drops in crimes and arrests altogether in that area of town. Our local media did a great job trying to ensure the message the community and police wanted to send was cheerful and welcoming.

Mainstream media tends to portray our law enforcement and juveniles as consistently battling each other. They should try to spend more time sharing the positive things happening instead of glorifying the horrific events. We tend to forget many uplifting, positive stories that should be reported, but the media thrives on the negative.

STUDENT REPLIES

STUDENT REPLY #2 Sochima Atikpoh

The portrayal of juvenile and police relationships in the media can definitely sway the opinion of the general population to be in support or totally against either party. In my opinion, majority of headlines that are released or go viral depict the relationship between juveniles and police to be strained, violent, dangerous, and in need of reform.

For example, the most recent tragedy of Ma'Khia Bryant. We assume that officers have the resources and skill to deescalate situations that call for it and even more so when youth is involved. However, in the case of Ma'Khia that did not happen. After officers were called to the scene from reports of her attempting to stab people around her, she was shot four times and died as a result (Sanchez, 2021).

As an individual viewing this from the outside there are so many questions that arise. To begin with:

Why wasn't there an attempt to deescalate the juvenile?

If the juvenile had to be shot in order to protect others around her, why did it have to be fatal? Couldn't she be disarmed with a shot somewhere on her body where survival was likely?

What training or policies are currently in place that discuss the protocol of how situations like this should be handled?

Work Cited:

Sanchez, M & Morales, M & Carroll, J (2021, April 22) Ma'Khia Bryant argued about housekeeping before fatal police shooting, foster parent says. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/22/us/ohio-columbus-makhia-bryant-police-shooting/index.html