Law enforcement summit puts students in officers’ shoes

“I really don’t want to deal with her,” Turlock student Nayeli Garcia said nervously to other teens as she waited her turn to go up against probation Officer Alexis Wilbur in a role-playing exercise Thursday morning.

Wilbur, who overheard, burst out laughing. But she understood. In a few traffic-stop scenarios Nayeli saw while waiting, Wilbur already had screamed and shouted at the “cops” played by students, wrestled a gun away from one and shot at least one.

It was all part of the five-hour Law Enforcement Youth Summit at the Stanislaus County Regional Training Center on Cornucopia Way in Modesto. The event brought 66 high school juniors and seniors together with members of the Modesto, Turlock and Ceres police departments, the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office and sheriff’s and probation departments for discussion and hands-on activities.

Showing students that law enforcement officers never know what to expect when conducting a traffic stop and seeing how the kids reacted in various situations were among the points of the exercise. Wilbur and her accomplice, Sheriff’s Department explorer Mariah Alvarado, sometimes were armed, sometimes not. Almost always, they were noncompliant, to say the least.

The one exception was when Alvarado leaped from the car and rushed at the students/officers in a panic, yelling that her passenger was having a medical emergency. As Wilbur writhed in mock pain, she demanded to know why the cops were pointing guns at her instead of calling for an ambulance. As the students seemed not to know what to do, the Ceres police detectives conducting the drill mercifully called “cut.”

“It’s been good learning how to deal with people doing something wrong or not doing something wrong – how to handle situations,” said Nayeli, a Roselawn High student who said she wants to make a career in law enforcement, likely as a probation officer.

She had reason to be wary of Wilbur as it turned out. “She acted like she was having a panic attack and she pulled out a gun and shot me,” said Nayeli, who fared better in a subject-stop exercise earlier in the morning.

Pretending to respond to a report of a suspicious person, students one by one entered a darkened room and were evaluated on how they handled their subject. In each case, the man or woman they encountered had either one or both hands in their pockets. Sometimes there turned out to be a gun, sometimes not.

Though they were briefed in advance, few students thought to instruct subjects to show their hands. “I forgot to tell the girl to keep her hands out of her pockets,” Neyeli said. “She had a gun but she didn’t kill me. The only thing that saved me was I kept my eyes on her.”

Some students didn’t, and with a verbal “bang, bang” found themselves dead. “Hands will kill you,” Ceres police Detective Bryan Ferreira repeatedly told the kids, reminding them to always insist on a subject showing his hands and to never turn their backs.

Modesto High senior Aneree Nong scored points for addressing her suspicious person with respect and concern. But she committed a big no-no. “One thing I absolutely would not have done was sit down by (the suspicious person played by Sheriff’s Department explorer Jessika Serrato),” Ferreira said. “That puts you in a position of disadvantage,” he added, noting that the subject easily could have grabbed Nong’s gun.

“I want to go into law as a lawyer,” said Nong, who’s on her school’s Hispanic Youth Leadership Council, “but with recent events and things like Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, I wanted to know what officers go through.”

During lunch with their hosts after the exercises, other students talked about what they got from the experience.

A campus supervisor and a counselor recommended to Roselawn student Isaiah Pina that he attend because he’s considering career options that includes law enforcement, law and the military. “I’m having a good time here,” he said of the summit. “This is preparing people for what they get into in law enforcement.”

He said the summit gave him greater understanding that “not all cops are the same, there are good ones and bad ones.” With the good ones, “the main purpose is do your work and get home safely to your family.”

Modesto High School student Sergio Maravilla said the scenarios helped him better understand the mindset of being a cop, and the thought process they go through every time they have to pull someone over. Coming into the summit, “I think I was neutral, but there was that small voice in the back of my head that cops are too quick to pull a gun, cops are bad people. I do think my perspective has broadened.”

This story was originally published October 20, 2016 at 4:40 PM with the headline "Law enforcement summit puts students in officers’ shoes."