American Renaissance
Previous Story       Next Story       View Comments       Send This Page       Date Archives       Category Archives

Mayor Calls on Cops to Help Reform Schools

More news stories on Miscellaneous

Alon Harish, Yale Daily News, September 30, 2009

Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s school reform campaign, dubbed “School Change,” is bringing in reinforcements: the cops.

The mayor, speaking to a class of recruits at the New Haven Police Academy last Thursday, stressed his belief that addressing chronic problems such as high truancy and dropout rates requires the involvement of an engaged and community-focused police department. Officials from the Board of Education and the New Haven Police Department said they will strengthen the link between police officers and public schools through the expansion of youth programs that build trust between officers and schoolchildren.

“I think there’s a tendency for kids in inner cities to harbor negative attitudes toward the police,” said Ward 7 Alderwoman Frances “Bitsie” Clark, who chairs the Youth Services Committee. “What the mayor is talking about is the role of the police not as enforcers but as educators and role models.”

One program, Gang Resistance Education and Training, or GREAT, a police officer mentoring program in schools that is now in its second year, will be expanded alongside DeStefano’s school reform plans. Ward 20 Alderman Charles Blango, the assistant dropout and truancy prevention coordinator for the Board of Education, said GREAT will be administered at six schools this year, up from two in 2008, and is scheduled to expand to at least two more in 2010.

City Hall spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city also will seek to expand its Police Explorers Program, which provides schoolchildren with hands-on experience and training opportunities for future careers in law enforcement.

But Clark said the city should be sure to focus on students’ activities both during and after school, given a dearth of safe places within the city for adolescents to hang out. She cited the mayor’s 2006 youth initiatives—including Youth@Work, which provides teenagers with employment opportunities, and Open Schools, which keeps school buildings and athletics facilities available after hours—as examples of progress, but she said much more must be done.

Police are also becoming more involved after school hours: A growing partnership formed last year between the Police Activities League, or PAL, and the Boys & Girls Club of New Haven, or BGC. Stephanie Barnes, BGC’s executive director and former project coordinator of Youth@Work, said the arrangement has strengthened both programs, which sponsor athletics leagues, educational activities and other programs for children who may not have a safe place to go when classes end.

“Our missions really overlap, so it was a natural fit. We’re trying to reach kids at an early age and reinforce their learning in school in a place where they can come to grow and make friendships,” she said. “We hope to be a part of the conversation,” she added, referring to the mayor’s renewed calls for reform.

Blango added that the partnership with PAL means that parents of at-risk youth, many of whom work multiple jobs, can feel safe sending their children to participate in BGC activities.

Despite the successes of several individual programs, however, doubt remains among some city officials about whether a cohesive strategy can be implemented that will use the city’s educational and law enforcement resources to maximum effect.

On the government level, Clark suggested an interagency approach: “I’d like to see us pool together the expertise from all the departments with a focus on youth issues,” she said.

She added, “I’d like to see the mayor spend some real time on this, not just announce something.”

Since 1995, the NHPD has offered the School Resource Officer program, which assigns seven officers to the schools reporting the highest crime rates.

Original article

(Posted on September 30, 2009)

     Previous story       Next Story       Post a Comment     Send This Page      Search

Comments

1 — NBJ wrote at 7:01 PM on September 30:

Great. More money, time and resources wasted so the cops can become thug sitters. What does this woman mean when she says these kids need a safe place to go after school? Why don’t they try..Umm.. HOME?

2 — Question Diversity wrote at 7:25 PM on September 30:

I won’t bother with most of the silliness in this article, after all, AR’s servers only have so many terabytes. But this one caught my eye:

City Hall spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city also will seek to expand its Police Explorers Program, which provides schoolchildren with hands-on experience and training opportunities for future careers in law enforcement.

Not a good idea. Relatively frequently, I’ll read a story about some young man, usually black or Hispanic, that will be caught impersonating a cop, going so far as to dress in regulation uniform and going out with a real cop, because they got the skills in the Explorer program.

3 — sbuffalonative wrote at 7:57 PM on September 30:


Blacks have no sense of introspection; ‘we appear to behave badly because others think of us as being bad’.

Gang Resistance Education and Training, or GREAT

Yet another useless, stop-gap alphabet solution. We all know how successful others have been which is why they have to keep coming up with new ones.

4 — Anonymous wrote at 9:07 PM on September 30:

“What the mayor is talking about is the role of the police not as enforcers but as educators and role models.”

Wonderful, lets try being their friends and see if that works.

A growing partnership formed last year between the Police Activities League, or PAL, and the Boys & Girls Club of New Haven.

More of, “Wonderful, lets try being their friends and see if that works.”

Got news for you friends, this is not going to work, you can only tame wild animals so far.

5 — ice wrote at 9:44 PM on September 30:

“I think there’s a tendency for kids in inner cities to harbor negative attitudes toward the police,” said Ward 7 Alderwoman Frances “Bitsie” Clark, who chairs the Youth Services Committee. “What the mayor is talking about is the role of the police not as enforcers but as educators and role models.”

They were saying the exact same thing when I was in school. In fact, it would be possible to take quotes about black crime and failure rates from years ago and publish them as today’s quotes and nobody would know the difference.

What was it in the mid nineties? Midnight basketball, eh? Well here it is 15 years later, and the crime problems and academic failures are the same. Maybe even a little worse.

As long as a nation has a group of people that cannot compete intellectually with the rest of the population, the best thing to do is to admit it. In other words, tell the truth, then discuss the best procedure to take to alleviate failure.

Trying to pretend that blacks are equal to all the other races is complete madness. And, as we have been witnessing these past several years, the situation only gets worse by accepting that premise.

6 — Madison Grant wrote at 10:01 PM on September 30:

Please note that this is the same Mayor DeStefano who refused to promote 20 firefighters because they were white- which received Senorita Sotomayor’s seal of approval.

7 — Question Diversity wrote at 11:44 PM on September 30:

If PAL in New Haven, Conn. is anything like PAL in St. Louis, then it won’t work to reduce crime, even though it’s a worthy enough effort. The sorts of kids, usually pre-teens, who would spend a lot of time under the close eye of a cop is the kind of kid that’s not going to commit a crime.

However, PAL doesn’t serve too many teenagers, and the teenage years among blacks is when the serious crime tends to start.

8 — Anonymous wrote at 4:53 AM on October 1:

“high truancy and dropout rates” are usually blamed on Whitey. Never on the broken family, caused by years of liberal policies.

9 — margaret wrote at 12:21 PM on October 1:

These sort of programs are widespread. It is not just the police either. This is a ploy for federal money and easy desk jobs instead of enforcing the law.

There are more of these social worker types than there are troubled youth to add to the statistics to get more federal money.

In my city a taxpayers association found one social service agency totally funded by the taxpayers that had 37 workers and only 16 teen age clients.

Money and easy do nothing desk jobs, this is what it is all about.

Schools and other government and government funded agencies make so much money from the disfunctional and criminal groups that they encourage this.

These gang activists have the same attitude towards criminal youth that diary farmers have towards their herds of milk cows. It’s how they make their living and the need continual replinishment of the stock to keep their salaries coming.

10 — Anonymous wrote at 12:29 PM on October 1:

I was a Juvenile Probation Officer for 43 years. In my lengthy experience, it is when juveniles get together that they commit crimes.

Ever heard the government grant hustlers yapping away about summer programs to keep teens off the street and engaged in wholesome activity? Reality check

Teen crime just about disappears when school lets out in June. The lowest rate of teen crime is in June, July and August. Teen crime rises sharply about September 10th when they get back together and join their hunting packs again.

There is almost nothing for a Juvenile Probation officer to do in July and August.

Teen crime even goes down in just the 2 weeks of Christmas vacation. Teen loners seldom get in trouble. Teens are very influenced by their peers for good or bad. Teens are really driven to conform. It is part of the standard growing up process.

So when these activist do gooder groups gather groups of thuggish teens together, it just facilitates criminal behavior.

One thing about teen crime. Almost never do teens commit their first few offenses alone. It is virtually always in a group.
Teens generally show at least 2 years, say 12 to 14 of criminal behavior in a group before they strike out on their own. We seldom see anyone under the age of 17 committing a crime alone.

So providing a place for the pack to meet just facilitates crime and criminal network groups.

11 — margaret wrote at 12:35 PM on October 1:

“She cited the mayor’s 2006 youth initiatives—including Youth@Work, which provides teenagers with employment opportunities, “

Doesn’t that conflict with the liberals goal of having every low level job filled by an illegal alien hispanic and every high level job filled by an H1-B visa Indian or Asian????

This is gross discrimination. LARAZA, MALDEF, ACLU, ADL, AJC needs to file a lawsuit immediately. How dare this group create a job placement center that will be used mostly by blacks who were born in this country whose ancestors have lived here for 350 years!!! This is clear and present evidence of gross discrimination against illegal hispanic adults.

12 — Michigan Patriot wrote at 5:11 PM on October 1:

This ” liberal demo-rat-ic, anti-white Christian , traitor is showing ” his own liberal racism “. White schools don’t need this militarization to insure civility ; is the mayor saying black youth do not recieve adequate parental supervision ? That sounds pretty ” racist ” to me( although perfectly accurate historically in my lifetime of 57 years or more ). This is the same treasonous major who was against merit promotion because Whites did so well while blacks didn’t on the fire and most likely police exams as well. What a hypocrite New Haven has as its mayor.

13 — Anonymous wrote at 2:43 PM on October 4:

Well, as with the situation in Detroit, why not simply let students drop out of high school? This would have several advantages: they would stop being a nuisance to students who really want to learn, and we would not end up with a generation of education criminals.

I was a Juvenile Probation Officer for 43 years. In my lengthy experience, it is when juveniles get together that they commit crimes.

This is interesting. One wonders how many more of our social institutions promote criminal behavior.


Home      Top      Previous story       Next Story      Send This Page      Search