In the wake of a video showing Columbia, South Carolina’s Officer Ben Fields apparently slamming and dragging a young black student at Spring Valley High School, the role of police officers in our schools has become the focus of nation-wide debate. Though Fields was fired, many are blaming the student for supposedly inciting the attack by not complying with teachers and administrators before Fields was called to the classroom, including Fields’ superior Sheriff Leon Lott who said the student “is responsible for initiating this action.”
We’Ced Youth Media took the incident as an opportunity to look at the issue locally. According to our city website, at the high school level Merced School Resource Officers (SRO’s) are meant to “maintain order on each of the campuses” and “identify ‘at risk’ juveniles and work with them to try to change their behavior.” Here, We’Ced reporters reflect on their experiences with SRO’s in the past and what they feel the role of SRO’s should be in our local schools.
Organizers and community members gathered in Merced on June 24th to pay homage to the nine African-American victims killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Organized in conjunction with Live Free Merced and Mt. Pisgah, the local AME church, the event brought together about 60 people.
We’Ced youth journalists recently spent time discussing the massacre at the Emanuel African African Methodist Episcopalian Church in downtown Charleston, which had a white shooter killing nine African-Americans. Many We’Ced members expressed outrage at the actions of the shooter, but the conversation soon began to circle around another issue: gun control. The tragic violence of this incident rekindled questions about how we regulate guns and guns access in our country.
Knowing that there is a stigma of certain communities in Merced and knowing that there are pockets in the community that are poor or have a strained relationship to police, that says to me that the city doesn’t care as much about these parts of the community because they’re not putting resources into these parts of the community.
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