Week 7: I Would Like to Ask a Few Questions
Hello everyone! This week was another slow one, but has also seen my survey progressing at a great pace!
First, Prescott Valley Police Department. This week, I was tasked by Community Services to do research in improving their outreach, whether through events or programs, to youths in Prescott Valley. This mainly took the form of me looking at how other law enforcement agencies, both in the state and in the country, perform Youth Outreach. These agencies would be the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, and various sheriff and police departments within the state, including Prescott Police Department. What I found was actually pretty interesting. The two agencies with the most Youth Outreach Programs would be the FBI and Phoenix Police Department, who both had around 4 to 6 programs. These would range from classes for their fields (FBI), to a sort of junior officer/cadet program (Phoenix), to even general community events or spaces that the agency would host (both). I found these sorts of programs, the ones where the agency are being part of the community, to be the best at improving relations with a community, both for youth and general members. A growing issue in community-police relations tends to be the idea that the police do not care about the people they are supposed to protect, or are actively antagonistic to them. While there have been cases where this is true and has led to such beliefs, there are also cases where the opposite is true, in that these beliefs come first and so certain officers, feeling disgruntled or jaded by a seeming lack of respect, start to not care or dislike the populace that they protect. The same goes for national agencies, like the FBI or CIA. Thus, to me, these community programs, where the police or other law enforcement are there just to be parts of the community, such as tutors or mentors, works to curb the bad habits of both sides, as it gives the community a more human and accurate portrayal of the officers that they may be stereotyping, and allows the officers, who additionally might not even live in the community they are protecting, to develop stronger tides to their jurisdiction. That is just my belief, however, and I am sure there are many differing views on how to improve community-police relations. To close this section off, I found that a majority of the smaller agencies in Arizona tend to only have these cadet programs, where teens are trained as police and work as volunteer police with actual officers, to be the most widespread of outreach programs, as well as the only in most cases. This I find to be a bit disappointing, since the purpose of Youth Outreach is that the program should reach as many kids as possible, while these programs only really appeal to teens who want to become law enforcement officers.
Next is Prescott Police Department, and you should probably guess by now that it is mostly the same. However, I have been talking with my supervisor on doing other things in the police department, which I am very excited about! I will not reveal them yet, in case they fall through or do not happen, but if it works out, I will be very happy to share it to you all!
Finally, my research. My survey was finished! It will be attached to this blog post, so all of you can read it. It is quite short, only 5 questions, both so that the busy officers will be able to fit completing it into their schedules, and so that I can compile the data quicker since I started it a bit late. As you can probably see, it mainly focuses on what the officers see as positive/negative aspects of police portrayal in fictional shows, both in general and in specifics. I was able to get it approved by supervisors and sent out this past week, so I’m hoping that next week I will be able to have a good number of responses (~20-40) so that I can analyze trends or certain points of contention. I do also have a follow-up question planned, though whether I send it out or not depends on the amount of time left I have this month. Still, I have already received two responses, and I am eagerly awaiting more next week!
Thanks for reading this week’s relatively short blog. I have a feeling that the next couple of weeks will have some interesting changes in my routine, including my 2nd Prescott Valley ride-along (coming next week or the week after), which I will definitely be sharing here! See you all then!
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