In a city that is growing more racially diverse by the day, Nashville’s police force remains predominantly white. To fix the disparity, the Metro police department has solely focused its outreach efforts in minority communities.
Even so, amid flaring tensions between police and minorities around the country, recruiting from this pool has been challenging: New trainees are still mostly white. In an effort to improve relations and make policing respectable to the next generation, this summer Metro Police offered its inaugural Youth Citizen’s Police Academy to 45 African-American teens.
‘A Noble Profession’
A Metro Police SWAT truck has the attention of 20 black teenage boys who are jogging backwards. “Check, this is the Metro Police, can you hear me?” booms Sgt. Ryan Lockwood from the SWAT truck. “It’s directional, so the sound will actually go a far distance,” he tells them.
The boys climb aboard and stick their heads out of the turret, and the questions start flying. Is that a TV? (No, it’s a monitor.) What kind of gun is mounted on top? (None, this is not Hollywood.) Then one thoughtful teen asks Lockwood a question that goes deeper. What was his worst experience with SWAT?
The sergeant carefully considers his answer. ”I’ll just give it a general,” he says. “Basically, the worst thing that we have to see is just what other people will do to each other.” Lockwood repeats himself to make sure the teens understand that policing isn’t fun and games.
Extending the citizens’ police academy to high school boys was the brainchild of Lt. Dwayne Greene, a cop and a member of 100 Black Men, a non-profit dedicated to helping young black boys. The participants for the program at the police training academy came from that organization’s 100 Kings program — and from Opportunity NOW, the mayor’s summer initiative for teens. Greene says black youth are responsible for a disproportionate share of teen crime, and he’d rather spark ambitions toward law enforcement.
“We use the motto at 100 Black Men, ‘They can’t be what they don’t see,'” Greene says. “So this allows them to be able to capture and grasp what policing is really about and to see that it is a noble profession that they can take on.”
The police chief himself sat down with the boys for a closed-door session. Greene says it’s important that the teens experience positive interactions with cops.
Inaugural Youth Citizen Police Academy has several of these young men considering law enforcement as a potential career.
pic.twitter.com/Ssm4IVhiv9— Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville)
“Many times, people fear what they don’t understand. With bad press, bad media or incidents that occur that just ended up being bad puts a stigma on the profession of police,” he says. “It’s unfortunate that it happened, but we have to take a stance and say, ‘We need you, we want you.’ “
Officers try to impress the group with a showcase of K-9 tricks, including a successful hunt for a hidden fugitive. Officer Rodney Clark gives a talk from high up on the saddle of his horse, Bear.
“As you can see, this is a large animal. If he comes walking toward you, you’re going to move, right?” he says, walking Bear into the crowd. They instantly part for the horse.
Clark shares a heroic story about the mounted police arresting five robbers and recovering a gun during the CMA Music Festival — all from their saddles. And officer Mike MacLennan shows the contents of his saddlebags: water, snacks for his horse Boo and rain gear. His horse seems to be listening.
“We also carry a dustpan. Why would we carry a dustpan?” he asks. As if on cue, Boo relieves himself. The boys are disgusted.
A Traffic Stop Goes Wrong
Next, the teens step in to role-play as cops, and it’s eye-opening. They pack pistols loaded with blanks and take turns pulling over a speeding SUV. In a scenario that plays out on real city streets, the mock drivers shout at them and pull guns — or look like they’re going to. As Jace Locke, a senior at East Nashville Magnet High School, approaches a car, someone runs off. Locke instinctively draws his weapon and fires.
Captain Keith Stephens, the police training instructor, explains to Locke the real-world consequences.
“You’re the one that fired about five rounds at the person running,” he says. “Now you’re going to be in court. … Every bit of force that we use we have to justify and articulate. Do you feel like you could sit on the stand and raise your right hand and say that you had to do that to protect the life of yourself, your partner Frank or the citizens of Nashville?”
“They disobeyed my order,” Locke says.
“You cannot shoot just because they run. You can’t shoot them in the leg, you can’t shoot at all,” Stephens says, giving him a redo.
By the end of the day, Locke is convinced the police are largely the good guys. “They’re here to protect us,” he says. “The majority of them really do care for us.”
Meanwhile, Vincent Malone, a 10
th grader at MLK Magnet, says he wasn’t comfortable being the cop, and he realized police can be a target at traffic stops. People in the car “are not afraid to put a false claim on you,” he says. “They said I had my hand on my gun, which I didn’t. They could easily say your hand was on your gun, so they could shoot you right there.”
Police work isn’t for everyone, but encouragement ruled the day: for the boy who said he can’t ride a horse because he’s black, for the boy who wondered how hard it is to fly a helicopter, for the boy who didn’t know there is no tuition bill for the training academy (they pay the trainees).
With minorities representing just one in five trainees this year, Metro police hope to get beyond any tension, and inspire more non-whites to consider joining the force.
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