Delaware State University students schooled about law enforcement
By DOVER — Every other Saturday morning, 15 or so Delaware State University students are being personally introduced to the law enforcement life.
Through the Police Officer Preparatory Academy, aspiring officers and would-be attorneys meet seasoned professionals, who share their real experiences during three- to four-hour sessions.
The program is sponsored through the university by the state’s National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives branch and runs throughout the school year.
Upon completion, participants earn three internship credits required for graduation.
For Saniyah Taylor-Blackson, a senior and president of the school’s chapter of 38 members, “it’s a very enriching and empowering group to be a part of, especially being around people who look like me in the system and in the field.”
The Saturday meetings, Ms. Taylor-Blackson said, “are all about networking and hearing from guest speakers who are already in the fields we want to be in. Investigators come in. Detectives come in. Attorneys come in. That’s my favorite part because you get to hear their stories, their journeys, their experiences in the field.
“It’s just exciting and motivating to interact with them and see that I’m going to be part of that one day,” the criminal justice major added.
Seven Wilson of Milford, another senior criminal justice major who plans to become a lawyer, also touted the academy: “I feel like just seeing people who are in a career field I want to be a part of just makes this 10 times better.
“It just makes it more enticing. ... I am looking to become a lawyer, and (the academy) allows you to hear about different laws and gain a better understanding of the things that I’m eventually (getting) into, so I’m very thankful to be a part of it.”
The academy was created after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police May 25, 2020, said Dr. Kimeu Boynton, interim assistant dean for Delaware State’s College of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences.
“This, kind of, grew out of the post-George Floyd, summer of 2020 racial justice movement with Black Lives Matter, where our students who were interested in law enforcement careers had a little bit of tension and doubt,” he said.
“It was almost as if they were saying to us, ‘I want to be a police officer, or I want to become a federal agent. But look at what the police just did to George Floyd. I don’t know if I want to be in a career where this is what happens to people, especially African Americans.’”
And so, that same year, Dr. Boynton joined Joseph Bryant Jr., a past president of the state chapter of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and former Delaware State Police Trooper William Chapman to share ideas on how to connect with students in a troubling time.
“We were looking for something and determined that we can still get folks interested in this career field by addressing some of the things that these students are seeing on television, whether it’s the death of George Floyd, whether it’s police brutality and other situations or even their own individual interactions with police,” he said.
At the university, Dr. Boynton said, “we have a lot of students from urban areas. They don’t always have the best relationship with law enforcement. And so we knew that we had the responsibility to bring two sides together — our students and law enforcement — and we wanted to have folks just have genuine conversations.
“And the training allows that they can ask questions, and no question is looked down upon. They can ask why police do certain things. And what we found is, the answers that they get, sort of, open their minds with ‘OK, I understand why this happened. Or why this should not have happened.’”
He went on to say that such discussions have opened the students’ eyes.
“No students I’ve interacted with have ever said, ‘Oh, Derek Chauvin (the ex-police officer convicted of murdering Mr. Floyd) was right in what he did.’ This was an outlier, and it should not have happened, and those are the conversations that the students needed to have. We, as academics, can’t do that in the classroom.
“They have to speak with people doing the job to have a full understanding of the (law enforcement system).”
Mr. Bryant said Delaware State University formed the first NOBLE collegiate program in the United States in 2003, and “when we started, we agreed to something that would try to attract potential employees for the criminal justice arena.”
Now, he said, “we can identify close to 80 or so students who (were chapter members) who are now employed as a criminal justice professional.”
Along with “a host here in Delaware,” trainees travel nationwide, with California, Texas, Florida and Georgia among the destinations, said Mr. Bryant, who served 42 years in law enforcement, including 25 with the New Castle County Police Department, before retiring as a major.
And there’s clearly a need for more Black officers in his former field, he added.
“There’s a lack of us in this profession, and I think folks in our African American communities want to see police officers who look like them help take care of the issues, whatever they might be,” Mr. Bryant said.
“So that’s really the key. It’s a really hard profession. It can be a thankless profession at times but very rewarding on the other hand. We have young folks who are Black and Brown — and, don’t get me wrong, we do have White students in our program — but we just think it makes all the sense in the world for us to have people who look like us in this profession.”
Senior Nala Wyatt of Richmond, Virginia, who majors in criminal justice, said she hasn’t been deterred by any negativity directed toward becoming a police officer.
Through the Police Officer Preparatory Academy, she’s learned that “representation matters, and I’ve learned that you need people who look like me. You need diversity.”
She also takes issue with media coverage of police officers, when the “positive things they do are overshadowed by the negative things. That’s why I want to do it — to create a change instead of just talking about it.”
Students also travel to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives’ annual conference, wherever it is held.
“That’s to expose them to other law enforcement officials across the country, most of whom are commanding,” Mr. Bryant said. “We want them to see, especially women, these folks across this country, and it’s been a success for us. Some of our students that go to these national conferences are heavily recruited by agencies outside of Delaware.”
