Compliance and cooperation is the only advice Miami-Dade County police officers had for a group of sixth through 10th graders in the Haitian Mentoring Program.
“The best advice we can give is just to listen and comply, because if you listen and comply, 99.9 percent of the time there should be no injury, no fighting, no accidental shootings, nothing,” said officer Sophia Pollas. “There is an occasion where the officer may be wrong, but that’s when you go to court and you can file a lawsuit against the department, etcetera.”
This is a problematic response to the questions and thoughts of children worried for their own safety. As an editorial board, we would like to make it known that to say “just comply” is to also say that all who have lost their lives to police brutality, excessive force and a system that targets minorities are to blame for their own deaths.
The issues of police brutality are not so simple that they can be remedied by compliance. It is an insulting solution that says ‘just accept it, we’re above you.’ What those who offer this advice fail to understand is that an officer being ‘wrong’ for many people potentially means death. You can’t “go to court and file a lawsuit” if you’re dead because an officer was “wrong.”
To tell children that their only option is to comply and hope for the best speaks to the state of our nation. Rather than offering true hope and solutions for change, it’s justifying the deaths by shrugging off longstanding systemic and policy issues that enable unjust killings. We need to do better by our children, and offer real solutions.
Additionally, in the upcoming forum with FIU Police being presented by FIU Student Media, FIU Student Media hopes to provide a space for discussion that will stimulate thought and alleviate responses along the lines of “just comply.” It’s not helpful and it’s insulting, as though to say that the men and women being murdered by police were disorderly and therefore subject to lethal force. Fear plays a very big role in both sides of the equation. We appreciate the police who make an effort to deescalate the scenarios they are faced with before they become deadly situations.
Image by Prayitno, retrieved from Flickr:
Why not do a ride along with some cops for some better insite. Youre obviously clueless as to the stress cops deal with nowadays and just plain rude people. As a cops wife I’ve spent 25 yes watching people attack him. He’s been through several surgeries, accident’s, shot at and assaulted with knives and even a butcher cleaver. In every single case he was injured, the suspect refused “to comply”. They were running their mouth, looking to do harm and hoping to cause injury and drama. If you get stopped, be respectful and zip your lip. You may even get out of a ticket..it’s exhausting reading everyone with absolutely no real life police experience or scars from criminals whine.