In the sweltering days of July, tensions between police and civilians were running high. A cop fatally shot Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, setting off a week of protests. Another police officer fatally shot Philando Castile in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, while his fiance and her 4-year-old daughter watched. A sniper shot and killed five police officers in Dallas.
But inside a Disneyland convention center in Anaheim, California, almost 700 law enforcement officers and security personnel were learning how to be role models in schools across the country. While families rode rollercoasters and met characters outside, school cops at the National Association of School Resource Officers’ annual conference spent a week attending panels about topics like active-shooter situations and potential terrorist threats. At night they sang karaoke, explored the amusement park and bonded over keeping our nation’s children safe.
[For more of this story, written by Rebecca Klein, go to http://hechingerreport.org/protecting-or-policing/]
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