After watching a MSNBC segment on the President's meeting discussing what happened in Ferguson, I wondered why they did not talk about our Cops and Kids program.
Operation Conversation: Cops & Kids is an innovative police-community relations model program run by the All Stars Project in partnership with the New York Police Department.&bsp; The program uses performance, improvisation and conversation to help teenagers and police officers in New York City's low income neighborhoods build respect and improve their relationship.
Cops & Kids began in 2006, at a moment when the relationship between inner-city youth and the police, while never easy, was especially tense following the shooting of Sean Bell, a young Black man in Queens. The program was founded by Dr. Lenora Fulani, a developmental psychologist, community activist and co-founder of the All Stars Project, who was eager to change the culture of mistrust between young people in our communities and the officers who police those communities. As she explains, "The two hardest things to be in this city are being a police officer and being a Black and Latino kid. My interest is in helping each to see each other as a human being. That might be useful in the middle of a tense situation one day." Cops & Kids uses the ASP's innovative performance approach to create a new relationship between police officers and young people of color from New York's poor communities, a relationship that is all too often filled with mutual distrust, animosity and stereotypical attitudes about the 'other'.
Since the program's inception, Dr. Fulani has led over 100 workshops involving thousands of youth and police officers. During the workshops, cops and kids play theater games and create improvisational performances together, thereby creating an environment for having honest (and difficult) dialogues. In addition, thousands more community members and police officers have participated in Demonstration Workshop performances all over the city which have broadened and deepened the impact of Cops & Kids in the NYPD and across New York City communities.
A survey of program participants conducted in 2013 showed:
- 88% of young people and 66% of police officers said that they learned something new about the other in the workshop
- 100% of young people and 93% of police officers said that the workshops played a positive role in promoting communication between police and youth
- 84% of all respondents said that the experience would positively affect how they would interact in the future
- 89% agreed that the Cops and Kids workshop was a step in establishing positive communication and promoting positive interactions between police and young people
As of October 2011, the NYPD officially incorporated Operation Conversation: Cops & Kids into the training of its police officers.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote!
Michael H. Drucker
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