Raiders Weigh in on Police Brutality

Lillian Tram

Officers Chris Mittendorf and Steve Schnoeblen speak to students during lunch. Both officers are new to North and have been making an effort to get to know their new Raider family.

Jeanie Torvi, Reporter

Police brutality has been more prevalent in the news and on social media. Predominately, it is a white cop shooting an unarmed black male; then thousands of people scream racism and discrimination. This is something labeling the decade in American history.
With the recent outrage and passionate riots ringing out, some students and adults spoke out about their feelings, including the Student Resource Officers (SROs):

“There are cases where police use excessive force, police brutality if that’s what you want to call it. Almost every one of those cases they’ve been prosecuted for it both by the law and administrative leave. Do police officers make mistakes? Absolutely. Do some police officers take it too far? Absolutely. And those ones that do take it too far need to be prosecuted and not be police officers anymore. But on the other hand of that too, both sides of the situation need to be educated better. Not only do police need to train better, but also citizens need to be educated better on how to interact with police. There’s a lot of times when things have been taken too far, not just by police officers but by citizens.”
– SRO Steve Schnoeblen

 

“Every profession has its bad apples. Surely there are some incidences where you see a video of some officers, and they have crossed the line. The vast majority of the time officers are acting well within our guidelines to protect themselves and others. Most of the shooting you see now, the way we were trained, is following proper procedure. We can’t afford for someone to point [a gun] at us before we react. If we give a verbal or legal command for someone to do something and they don’t do it then they’re actively resisting us.”
– SRO Chris Mittendorf