Creekside students meet Sonoma cops over coffee

By Christian Kallen, Sonoma Index-Tribune
Original article HERE

Shireen Ellis thought it would be a good idea for her social studies students to attend Coffee with a Cop on Wednesday morning, just half a mile away from the Creekside High School campus. “I usually have 15 or 18 kids in my civics class, but as it turned out all of the 40 kids at Creekside walked down there – everyone wanted to participate.”

She and her students at the alternative high school found over a dozen uniformed officers from Sonoma Police and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office engaging in community relations at the Peet’s Coffee & Tea location on Broadway, a short block from the Plaza.

“I spoke with Shireen at the El Verano community meeting last week, and she said she’d like to have some way for her students to have some interaction with law enforcement,” said Sgt. Jason Craver of the Sonoma Police, referring to the SV Connect meeting held on Dec. 8. “I didn’t dream she’d show up with her whole school.”

Coffee with a Cop has become an international method for establishing trust between law enforcement and the community since its 2011 start in Hawthorne, California. There have been three such events in Sonoma in the past year, and local law enforcement is committed to having more in 2017.

For Ellis, the encounter was all she had hoped for. “Based on what’s been happening around the country, I’ve been trying to figure out ways of getting students to realize that police, sheriffs, they’re human beings too,” said the teacher. She called the meeting a way of “normalizing relationships,” so meeting an officer isn’t just a negative interaction based on getting into some kind of trouble, as many of her students have known.

The size of the Creekside contingent, which included teacher Walt Williams, was too large for the already-crowded Peet’s morning traffic, so most of them stayed outside, talking with Sgt. Cecilia Focha of the Valley sub-station, and Sgt. Mechelle Buchignani and Deputy Mike Schemmel of Sonoma Police, among others.

The students met deputies who were ex-military, one who had been a continuation student himself, one who had been a first-grade teacher. “For my kids to hear there’s other paths and different reasons why you become a police officer, I thought that was great,” said Ellis.

“I personally felt it was absolutely empowering to speak to kids who are right at the verge of taking off into their lives, and see how positive the connection was,” said Focha, the former first-grade teacher who chose law enforcement as a second career. “They know us as people, and not just superficially.”

Ellis took note of some students who may have had run-ins with law enforcement in the past who had a defensive attitude of false bravado, but who seemed to let their guard down when they got to the event. “You could see them settling in – communicating, asking good questions.”

“I didn’t think I was going to talk to them, but I had a good conversation with the lady cop,” said Creekside student Yasmin Calvillo, 17.

“It was good to have coffee with the cops because in reality they are really cool and it was comfortable,” said Lizbet Ruiz, also 17.

“It’s a cool program,” agreed Craver. “I think it’s really good for the officers, too, to talk with people on a social level. We get a little insulated from people, it gets to where you only talk to other cops about stuff.”