Fun day enables police to connect with students
By JEFF STITT
jstitt@yourmvi.com
Over the past few school years, Betsy Bacon, a first-grade teacher at McKeesport Area School District’s Twin Rivers Elementary, noticed that some of the 6- and 7-year-old students in her class “don’t have positive viewpoints on the role of the police.”
She came to the realization while discussing current events with students that involved police and community recreational activities that the police attended. A few students each year would make negative sweeping generalizations about police officers.
“It’s opinions that I think they may have formed from something they have heard their parents say or something they heard from a friend or on TV,” Bacon said. “It bothered me, and I just wanted them to be able to have a positive interaction with their local police, so, I decided to try and do something about it.”
She got together for a brainstorm session with her neighbor, McKeesport police Officer Chuck Thomas, as well as McKeesport Detective Dan Goughnour, who helps oversee juvenile crime and prevention for the city’s bureau of detectives and participates in the Officer Phil Program.
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