Memoirs of a Playground Cop

School police officers are trained to deal with juveniles differently from that of adults. We have to show compassion and understanding towards the younger generation as they are often mislead by societies ills and most notably, by their parents, who are govern by misguided and mislead information. Furthermore, children and young adolescences will act adversely simply because parents condone this behavior. Parents teach children that no one can tell them what to do while at school and they do not have to answer any questions or cooperate with adults they feel are inferior to them. On the contrary, children must cooperate with teachers, administrators, especially police and school police officers at that. Sometimes we get children and adolescence that lawyer up and tell the officer “I don’t have to tell you shit, because my daddy said so". Thats all well in good. They don't have to talk to the officer, however, if there is enough evidence to place the child or adolescent into custody, and the complainant or victim wishes prosecution, we do not have to question adolescent at all there after. Children and adolescence alike have a false notion that the world revolves around them and that they know everything there is to know about the world they live in. They believe that they can do whatever they want without any repercussions and they further rebel after they are either given a class “C” citation or placed into custody for whatever arrest able offense they commit. As school police officers, we ask ourselves “what is our true function when applying and enforcing the law”? I know that this situation is not any different from that of the adult setting, but what is it teaching the young children about the law and how it is applied differently in the real world context? Events like these is solidifying what I’ve always assumed about the law and its applications, that is that the law benefits a few while at the same time places the majority of society at a disadvantage. School police officers were often at odds with school administrators as to how law enforcement is to be dispensed in the schools. Most school administrators wanted school police officers to give out tickets and make arrests, regardless of the offenses. However, when it came to a student they liked and are a school stand out school administrators would go to bat for them and protect them as much as they can without compromising their position. Students see this; they are not dumb as we think they are. On the contrary, they are very smart and ingenious when it comes to exploiting an item or event that will benefit them in the end. Children and adolescent are empowered by their parents to rebel and revolt against society’s laws because they feel that juveniles are protected under the law, and to some degree they are ( under the age of 10 though), meaning that juveniles cannot be charged criminally for a crime. Children and adolescence can be charge with a criminal offense if all of the elements of the offense are met. This attitude by children and adolescence create this “aw” of invincibility and this makes matters worse when school police officers get involved. At times, it wasn’t easy working with school administrators with an ego problem. School administrators were under the impression that they get their way regardless of the outcome it produces. There were times when I thought that working with school administrators was a waste of time because for the most part they were not going to listen to whatever a poor broken down police officer had to say anyway. School police officers would pray that they would not be assigned to a school campus where an over bearing school administrator would command total obedience from employees that were under them. That was exactly how most school administrators saw school police officers assigned to their campus as school property that were earmarked to be used in anyway necessary as they see fit. Of course, this line of thinking did not go over well with most of the school police officers in our department. As a school district police department, we cannot lose sight of the fact that we have a mission to complete and as difficult as it maybe at times dealing with internal and external factors, we must focus our attention in protecting our most vital audience; our students, our "future".