Students at Berkeley High School (BHS) are no strangers to law enforcement. At BHS, there are about 15 school safety officers that are stationed around the school and numerous police cars present throughout the day at the school's gates, not to mention the fact that the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) building is directly across the street. One of the school’s most popular classes, Law and Social Justice (LSJ), allows students to have a personal and informative experience riding along with a local BPD officer.
During ride-alongs, there are three people in the car, and students rotate out sitting in the front seat with the police officer driving the vehicle. While the cop is not actively on duty during ride-alongs, they do have a police radio, and responses to calls are also determined by the officer.
“An integral part (of the class) is having diverse perspectives rather than just a typical Berkeley ‘defund the police’ view,” Sophia Nishioka, a junior at BHS, said.
Nishioka is in LSJ I, the beginner-level class for juniors. She narrated her excitement and hopes to gain more insight surrounding policing, specifically the implications and expectations of being a police officer. “You get personal perspectives about what it's like policing (and) how it differs policing in Berkeley versus other cities,” Nishioka said, “There's a tiny part of (it being scary because) you are with the police (and) anything could happen.”
After completing her ride along, Nishioka felt that she gained a valuable perspective into what policing entails and the crime rate in our community, which in turn, gave her a deeper understanding of our Berkeley community and its negative tendencies towards police. “When you see a cop in a police car, you don't really think about the person they are, but being in the car and seeing how much they do to help people and make our community feel safe, I feel like really gave me a better understanding,” Nishioka said, “I think until you're in the car responding to calls with them, you don't really understand just how much goes into it and how much (cops) do.”
This excitement and desire with an up close and personal experience with the police is not unique to Nishioka, as many other students who are awaiting their police ride-alongs experience similar emotions leading up to the event. “I think it'd be interesting to … just kind of see what it's really like to be a law enforcement officer,” said Thea-Rose Levine, a junior at BHS currently taking LSJ I. “I just think it educates… students a lot more about what police actually do, and who they are,” Levine said.
Students who are in LSJ II, the advanced-level class for seniors, and have already completed a police ride-along describe it to be an incredibly unpredictable and enriching experience, full of opportunities to learn about policing, its impacts, and its consequences on a much deeper level. “You (get) the internal perspective on how it all works and what's wrong with policing,” Theo Koehler, a BHS senior, said, “We talk a lot about what is wrong with policing in class, but getting that perspective from the cops themselves is very different.”
After experiencing a ride-along in his previous year as a student in LSJ I, he feels as though he gained many new perspectives about the reality of law enforcement versus how the media depicts it to be. “Other people think about cops and they never actually learn about what cops do, straight from the source. Having that perspective that is straight from the source and that's unbiased by social media and what other people think, that's super valuable,” Kohler said.
Through this riveting, personal, and incredibly explanatory experience, students at BHS are able to step into the role of a police officer, and get a direct perspective from inside the system of law enforcement. Students are provided with a more clear understanding of the risks, impacts, and rewards of policing, and they gain crucial knowledge of how our local criminal justice system performs.