Portsmouth police teach teens what to do – and what not to do – if they’re pulled over
PORTSMOUTH VA October 24 2018
With the emergency lights on, Jawuan Pollard stepped out of the police car and walked toward his classmate’s sedan.
He touched a light on the back of her car, just as the officer told him to do. If his classmate, Terryiana Brown, sped away from the mock traffic stop, his fingerprint would be on that light.
He scanned the backseat with caution, then approached Brown’s window.
“License and registration, please,” the high school student said.
Pollard, Brown and their driver’s education classmates took turns playing the roles of police officer and driver Monday as part of a new program created by the Portsmouth Police Department, “Teens and Traffic Stops.”
Believed to be the first of its kind in Virginia, the program is aimed at teaching teens what to do – and what not to do – when pulled over by police. In 90-minute sessions at Churchland High School, students watched footage of traffic stops and acted out scenarios with officers in the school’s auditorium before heading outside, where they sat in the driver’s seat of police cars and role-played.
“Everyone is nervous when you get pulled over, and that’s a natural thing,” said Lt. B.K. Hall, who created the program. “But this is a way to kind of get those butterflies out and introduce them to the different scenarios that we can face.”
Hall, the department’s chief of staff, modeled the program after a similar one in Fulshear, Texas. Monday’s sessions at Churchland were the first, and Hall said he hopes to expand the program to the rest of the school district.
The program allows students to experience traffic stops from the officer’s perspective, Hall said. For example, when students sit in the front of the police car, they can see for themselves how an officer may not be able to tell how many people are inside a pulled-over vehicle – or what the driver is doing with his or her hands.
In light of high-profile traffic stops and shootings of and by police around the country, Hall said the program also helps improve the relationship between police and teen drivers by building a better understanding of what officers do and why.
“Obviously our goal is to have everyone go home that’s involved in a traffic stop,” Hall said. “Nobody wants to get hurt; that goes for the officer as well as the driver. And I think this is a step towards that.”
At the start of the program, Hall showed the students dashboard and body camera footage from several traffic stops, including one where a man got out of his car and fired a gun at police and another in which a sheriff’s sergeant shot and killed a teen driver in Michigan.
Students watch their classmates participate in a “Teens and Traffic Stops” role-playing exercise on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018 at Churchland High School in Portsmouth.
Hall gave the students instructions on how to act if they’re pulled over: remain calm, keep hands visible, make slow movements, tell the officer if they have a weapon, stay seated in the vehicle unless instructed otherwise.
He also told them about their rights, consent searches and what “plain view” means – that an officer can seize contraband items from the vehicle without a warrant if they’re in plain view.
And if they believe an officer has abused his or her power, Hall told them, they should report it to the department afterward.
Police Chief Tonya Chapman said she hopes the program makes students understand that “the side of the road is not the time to get in an argument or hold court, and if they feel their rights are being violated, or if they got the ticket inappropriately, that they have a mechanism that they can call our professional standards unit and we will investigate the incident.
“But the end goal is that everyone goes home safely.”
Terryiana Brown, a student at Churchland High School, waits patiently after being “pulled over” by fellow student Jawuan Pollard, who plays the role of a police officer, during a role-playing exercise on Monday, Oct. 22, 2018 at Churchland High School in Portsmouth.
After the first session of the day Monday, several students said they had a better understanding of how to comply when pulled over, and Brown said she better understood police: “… they really do care about other people,” she said. Pollard said the role-playing scenario helped him see “the other side” of a traffic stop.
After asking his classmate for her license and registration, he told her the reason for the faux stop – speeding. He asked Brown to put her hands where he could see them, and she quickly lifted them in the air.
Then he did what seemed best given her compliance.
He let his classmate off with a warning.
PilotOnline
