At a South High assembly during the first week of school, students were presented a video purportedly to help them react to racist incidents. When I first heard the video I thought it was a parody as it contained a multitude of hyperbolic accusations. But it wasn’t satire. Its hyperbole is potentially very dangerous.
Had we as a newspaper published what the video stated, we could be successfully sued for libel and defamation. It stated that police are “trained to see people of color, gender non-conforming folks and Muslims as criminals.” Such vilification must be backed up with evidence, which the video does not provide, but nevertheless presents as fact. But when it came to a horrific crime perpetrated on a member of the Jewish community, there was no evidence that Denver Police Dept. had been “trained” to treat the victim — a member of a visible minority community — as a criminal.
When Yeshiva Toras Chaim student Shmuli Silverberg was brutally murdered a year ago in a random act of evil, DPD worked tirelessly to apprehend the suspects within days. The outreach to the YTC community was so strong that Rabbi Aharon Wasserman not only invited Chief Police Paul Pazen to its annual dinner but commended him publicly from the stage.
One of the most dangerous aspects of the video was its instruction not to call the police in the wake of a crime if the victim does not desire it. Beyond the issue of fomenting distrust of police, this is horrible advice that will only allow crime to flourish in venues where it already suffers from underreporting, particularly when it comes to sexual assault.
In recent years, two major area public high schools — East in Denver and Fairview in Boulder — have failed to report sexual assaults to the police on more than one occasion. Fairview’s principal was forced to step down after it was revealed that he had obstructed police investigations of sexual assaults.
In the face of such abject administration failures, students should be encouraged to report crimes to the police. Instead, South tells perpetrators that there’s a good chance they’ll get away with it.
High school is often a hard place, and adolescence a difficult developmental stage. There can be immense peer pressure. Fear of retaliation, public shaming and pressure to conform can all contribute to a culture of “keeping quiet.” It’s a school’s job to counter that. South High’s video did just the opposite. It sent a wrong — and dangerous — message.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com
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