First Encounters: How Youth Form Opinions About Police

A child sees police officers at a school assembly, smiling and friendly, there to teach about safety and build positive relationships - and forms impression of police as helpers. Another child's first encounter is watching officers raid their home or arrest their parent, the terror of armed strangers taking family away - and forms impression of police as threat. A teenager's friend is stopped and frisked walking home from school, humiliated in public for nothing, and that story spreads through peer networks, shaping how entire groups of young people perceive police.