The Auburn Plainsman A SPIRIT THAT IS NOT AFRAID
Thursday, January 19, 2017 Vol. 124, Issue 17, 12 Pages
POLICE
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Protection and collateral damage
KRIS MARTINS / ENTERPRISE EDITOR
Kris Martins
ENTERPRISE EDITOR
For Shannon Arthur, interacting with the police means exercising respect and caution. That’s how she, the daughter and niece of New York law enforcement officials, was raised. But interacting with officers is not without fear. “My uncle and my dad have always told me that by the end of the day, you are black despite the fact that you are a daughter of law enforcement,” Arthur, senior in political science, said. “You’re still black, and that means nothing.” Ever since the high-profile shootings of young black men in several U.S. cities last summer, she’s been more cautious. But she’s particularly concerned with the well-being of her siblings, specifically her 16- and 18-year-old brothers and her 22-year-old sister. “My biggest fear is that my brother or my sister fits a description of something, and they don’t make it home, and it’s because of a police officer,” she said. The fear comes to mind because of a police encounter Arthur had when she first transferred to Auburn in 2013. An officer pulled her over, saying she “fit the description” of someone officials were looking for. “I don’t know whose description I fit because I’m just a black girl leaving Walmart with my groceries going back to The Connection where I used to live,” she said. “So that automatically makes you be on caution.” She told the officer she didn’t fit the description of anyone and requested to know what “fit the description” actually meant before asking for his badge number. During the encounter, Arthur remembers the officer as aggressive. If the same scenario resurfaced today, however, she said wouldn’t confront the officer because she’s even more cautious, but she noted that it’s
High-profile officer-involved shootings in U.S. cities in 2016 raised questions about the use of force in other communities. Local law enforcement officers explain how they train for tense situations important to know your rights during an officer encounter. She and her family know to always be prepared to record the interaction, something she feels is unfortunately “policing the police.” Though Arthur believes such instances shouldn’t happen, she understands officers are trying to stay alive in an unpredictable field. “If I’m giving you a reason to be aggressive — like I’m yelling at you, I’m cursing you out — yeah, I can totally see you being aggressive back,” she said. “But if I’m just like, ‘Why are you pulling me over?’ It’s my right to know why you’re pulling me over.” Since then she hasn’t had any similar confrontations with local police, though she knows others who have felt unjustly pulled over or unnecessarily treated aggressively. At the end of the day, for her, it’s about selfpreservation. “Honestly, our goal is to make it home,” Arthur said. The community and the police should work together to help one another, she said, with police transparency also playing a major role in establishing trust. “I don’t want to live in fear,” Arthur said. “I don’t. Especially from someone who’s supposed to protect me.” Response to resistance Last year, several officer-involved shootings
in the U.S. sparked outrage from citizens within those cities and others around the nation. In response, many communities, including Auburn, made efforts to pinpoint the reasons for and potential solutions to tensions in their own backyard. Lee County, in which Auburn resides, has had some of its own officer-involved shootings, one of which sparked its own concerns about the way Auburn officers use force. However, police also explain how they train for different scenarios and how they’re often forced to make decisions in a matter of seconds. Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones believes the key to professional law enforcement is training and education. “There’s no way we can train for everything, but we certainly can train to develop techniques that would best apply, in a general sense, to situations that are presented to us that would give us a baseline to work from — in regard to reacting to our circumstance — that would hopefully result in a resolution without harm to anyone,” Jones said. “That’s our No. 1 concern.” The primary goal of the office, Jones said, is to resolve issues verbally rather than physically. “Our absolute last resort — and that’s what we train — is using force,” he said. Before a deputy sheriff can respond to calls and be on patrol at the sheriff’s office, they must complete a two- to three-month field-training officer program, in which they are assigned to a veteran deputy sheriff to learn the geography of the county and procedures of the office. Alabama officers must also complete a 13week, 520-hour minimum-standards academy training before being certified as a sworn officer.
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AWARDS
Aubie takes second
The tiger finished at No. 2 in UCA Mascot National Championship Chris Heaney CAMPUS WRITER
Aubie placed second in the UCA Mascot National Championship, but to Michael Reynolds and the other members of "the Aubie Family,” it was more about the journey than the destination. Although Aubie went into the competition ranked first thanks to his previous title and entry video being judged as the best by UCA, he placed second behind Goldy Gopher from the University of Minnesota. The competition took place on Friday, Jan. 13, after months of preparation on behalf of Aubie and
his team to create entry videos, props and routines. Reynolds, executive director of Student Financial Services, is an adviser to Aubie and quite possibly his biggest fan. In his 12 years of being an Aubie adviser, Reynolds has seen Aubie both win and lose. But he said he takes great pride in that Aubie has always placed in the top five. “When he doesn’t win, it's heartbreaking for them [the Aubie Family], but as a program we have to accept the results because we know
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MADISON OGLETREE / PHOTO EDITOR
Aubie greets fans during Tiger Walk before Auburn Football vs.Alabama A&M on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016 in Auburn,Ala.