{"id":29428,"date":"2022-03-06T14:09:40","date_gmt":"2022-03-06T14:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=29428"},"modified":"2022-03-06T14:09:40","modified_gmt":"2022-03-06T14:09:40","slug":"educating-future-cops-moves-beyond-traditional-police-skills-at-msu-local-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/06\/educating-future-cops-moves-beyond-traditional-police-skills-at-msu-local-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Educating future cops moves beyond traditional police skills at MSU | Local News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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About 40 law enforcement majors were packed into a classroom at Minnesota State University for one of their final courses before they graduate and begin careers as cops, deputies and troopers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll remind you, your resume and your first practice POST exams are due Tuesday,\u201d professor Pat Nelson said, referring to the Peace Officers Standards and Training exam they\u2019ll need to pass to become licensed.<\/p>\n

What came next in the Senior Seminar course didn\u2019t delve at all into Minnesota criminal statutes, the constitutional standards for search and seizure, the difference between probable cause and reasonable suspicion, or any of the other concepts and facts tested by the POST exam.<\/p>\n

Instead, it was a wide-ranging discussion of a recent performance by MSU\u2019s Theatre Department of \u201cWounded Healers.\u201d Written and composed by Timothy Berry, the music and spoken-word performance piece is described as a historical chronology \u2014 from pre-colonial Africa to the present day \u2014 of how Black male bodies physically carry neurological trauma due to structural and systemic racism and how Black men have used creative expression to survive and heal.<\/p>\n

The members of the class had been asked to attend the performance, and Berry was on hand \u2014 along with cast members and MSU theater majors Lyreshia Ghostlon-Green and Joaquin Warren \u2014 to offer an opportunity for discussion.<\/p>\n

Many of the future cops were ready and willing, filling the 75-minute class with questions and comments.<\/p>\n

The first student to raise his hand, a white male like the vast majority of the class, told the performers they had an impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t felt anything like that before,\u201d he said, before noting one place where his opinion had shifted. \u201cI\u2019ve heard of Black Lives Matter before that, didn\u2019t have a real positive connotation. But it really changed my outlook on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berry, interim associate vice president for faculty affairs and equity initiatives at MSU, responded in part by tossing out the final line of the poem \u201cI, Too\u201d by Langston Hughes.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019I, too, am America,\u2019\u201d Berry said. \u201cWhy would he have to say something like that?\u201d<\/p>\n

It goes to the feeling of not being included, he said. And the same word is obviously implied in the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s missing is the word \u2018too,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Reexamination, reform<\/h3>\n

Nelson, the chair of MSU\u2019s Department of Government along with being a law enforcement instructor, was vacationing in northern Minnesota in early June of 2020 when Minneapolis was erupting following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.<\/p>\n

Nelson said she was watching events unfold, thinking about how it was affecting her students, when she got the call. Then-MSU President Richard Davenport wanted faculty and administrators to engage with the community about how the university was educating future cops and corrections officers.<\/p>\n

Nelson remembered her thoughts on the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should do more than just listen to what people have to say. We should make a plan to do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Online meetings were set up and hundreds of community members participated. A task force made up of MSU officials and criminal justice professionals from around the state convened to develop specific recommendations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had some real good conversations in the work group about what we\u2019re doing, what we should be doing and how we explain what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Nelson said.<\/p>\n

By this spring, the changes developed by the task force will be fully implemented in MSU\u2019s law enforcement, corrections and criminal justice programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the ideas are ones we\u2019re already talking about in the classroom,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Concepts like de-escalation, strategies for effectively dealing with people with mental illness, understanding how past interactions with law enforcement might affect how witnesses react to a police officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re being much more deliberate about it and making sure everybody is doing it,\u201d Nelson said of the criminal justice curriculum at MSU.<\/p>\n

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Future law enforcement officers earning degrees at Minnesota State University participated in a discussion about the impact of racism on Black Americans during their Senior Seminar class.<\/p>\n

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The changes will also impact the general education classes law enforcement students take. The general-ed classes, which aim to ensure students receive a well-rounded education that goes beyond their specific major, include everything from history and political science to ethics and philosophy to psychology and sociology to the humanities.<\/p>\n

Under the new guidelines, students majoring in criminal justice programs must take 18 of the 44 general-ed credits in classes that have a special focus on diversity, equity and social justice within those broader academic disciplines.<\/p>\n

And everyone majoring in law enforcement and corrections must take a pair of one-credit classes that put them in the community working with diverse populations \u201cthrough activities that have nothing to do with criminal justice,\u201d Nelson said. An example is volunteering at Mankato\u2019s annual powwow.<\/p>\n

The idea is to have the students learn by interacting with other cultures on a human level, the hope being that the experience will make for more respectful and informed interactions in the students\u2019 future lives as law enforcement professionals.<\/p>\n

Reaction, reflection<\/h3>\n

Nelson said faculty at MSU were open to changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of them really balked at the idea at all,\u201d she said. \u201cThey just asked me to make sure the recommendations were realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Law enforcement students continue to receive the traditional instruction on criminal statutes, constitutional law, investigative techniques, police procedures and other practical skills. But a few have made clear they\u2019d prefer not to be having discussions on race, equity, cultural competency and the like.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get some pushback on those conversations,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cAnd I had a student who accused me of \u2018pandering to the left-wing philosophy,\u2019 I think is the way he put it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson said pushback is a necessary component of education, but her response was that a person, regardless of the profession they work in, is going to have difficulty if they think all people can be lumped into simple categories rather than working to understand the complexities that make up each individual.<\/p>\n

Students are considering those concepts, based on some of the \u201creflection papers\u201d students in the Senior Seminar wrote about their education and their looming entry into the real world of law enforcement.<\/p>\n

One, who hopes to be an investigator, wrote about the \u201cideal officer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy ideal officer would rather help bring someone on the street who is struggling with drug addiction to a rehab center than just throwing them in jail. My ideal officer has integrity and is trustworthy. … The officer\u2019s partner and department does not have to worry about the officer not being honest or moral.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another recited how much she learned, including how to write a police report, conduct an investigation, practice community policing and deal with domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse and more. But she said her education also altered how she pictures an exceptional police officer \u2014 that concepts like compassion and respect are necessary characteristics, along with knowledge, hard work and ethics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine a more rewarding legacy for myself than looking back and knowing that I spent every workday loving, respecting and serving others, to the best of my ability, in hours of great need,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

And another wrote about setting aside the preconception that people in poverty were there because of their personal faults.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I am being honest, I didn\u2019t think there was such a thing called mental illness or food deserts before I went to college. I was raised in a household that you worked for what you had. Those who didn\u2019t have what I had, must\u2019ve not worked hard enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Repetition, relationships<\/h3>\n

If questions are an indication, students in the law enforcement Senior Seminar were interested in learning the perspectives of the people behind \u201cWounded Healers.\u201d The hands stopped going up only when the time ran out.<\/p>\n

Ghostlon-Green said she joined the performance partly to encourage the audience to move beyond preconceptions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stereotype is that Black people are always angry or always loud,\u201d she said, hoping that those who attended better understand the experiences and pain they\u2019ve endured.<\/p>\n

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Joaquin Warren, a theater major at MSU, asked his law enforcement counterparts to never stop exploring the history and experiences of people of color and other marginalized groups in America.<\/p>\n

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Warren asked the law enforcement students to keep exploring the history of marginalized groups of all kinds and the bigotry they\u2019ve faced.<\/p>\n

\u201cExpose yourselves to more truths than you\u2019ve ever known and don\u2019t stop yearning to learn,\u201d he said, later adding: \u201cIf you don\u2019t know where I stand and I don\u2019t know where you stand, how can we meet in the middle?\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to a question from a student about Berry\u2019s comment during a post-performance discussion that the life cycle for Black Americans is cyclical rather than linear. Berry said one element of that is the presence of repeating patterns, running through a list of names that included 17-year-old Jesse Washington, tortured, lynched and burned alive in Texas in 1916; 14-year-old Emmett Till, lynched in Mississippi in 1955; 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, chased and murdered by three white men in Georgia in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur past is always co-mingling with our present and our future,\u201d Berry said. \u201cIt\u2019s just different iterations of the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berry encouraged the law enforcement students to keep having difficult conversations with people of color. Like anything, it takes practice to get comfortable with the skill. And that advance work will mean fewer assumptions about those people. It will also mean \u201ca settled nervous system,\u201d Berry said, when they interact with similar people in their future professional lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in the future,\u201d Berry said. \u201cI believe you\u2019re going to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

The interaction between the Senior Seminar students and the \u201cWounded Healers\u201d cast is the sort of thing that incoming MSU law enforcement students will be experiencing more consistently with the changes being implemented, Nelson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur students who start here as a freshman may get tired of hearing it by the time they\u2019re seniors,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it\u2019s an important message to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n