YOUR SOURCE OF NEWS IN SELMA AND DALLAS COUNTY, ALABAMA April 18, 2019 | Volume 4, Issue 13
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Selma police, schools push to find funding to add SROs on middle, high school campuses
Selma Police Chief Spencer Collier with Det. Dorothy Cowan and SRO Kenny Keith. BY TODD PRATER Special to the Selma Sun Selma Police and Selma City Schools are working together to get five School Resource Officers in the middle and high schools for increased safety. Data shows that when SROs are in schools, there is a marked reduction in dis-
ruptions and other problems. That is why Selma City School Superintendent Dr. Avis Williams has been actively working with the Selma Police to get more SROs. Selma Police Chief Spencer Collier said on his radio show, Police Beats with Chief Collier, which airs every Thursday on 94.7 WJAM, that there is a plan
for Selma City Schools to pay for two and a half SROs and the police to pay for two and a half, for a total of five fulltime SROs dedicated mostly to Selma High and Hudson Middle School. The school board voted to move forward with this. However, because of Selma’s current financial situation, Selma
City Council voted against hiring officers for these positions. Collier said there is a compromise. Through the new federal Weed and Seed program in Selma, grants could be an option to fund at least a year for an SRO. Because Collier cannot hire anyone new, he has done some shifting and reassigning and made the current SRO full time. Instead of hiring an additional officer, the grant money will allow him to use an off-duty officer to fill the other SRO position. So if the school board provides two SROs and the Police Department provides two that will be four, which Collier said is not the five he wanted but it will definitely make a difference. Selma would be following a growing trend of having police officers in schools. The National Center for Education Statistics reports 42 percent of public schools had at least one SRO present at least one day a week during the 2015-2016 academic year, the latest year data was collected. Collier invited to his show last week Officer Kenny Keith, a trained and certified School Resource Officer who works at Selma High School. Keith said it has been a challenge because some students will test teachers and principals; they act up and get out of hand and disrupt class. Keith said
although it is just a handful of kids causing trouble, much of the class time that could be used teaching is used trying to control the kids. Keith said there are good teachers in the Selma school system, but the students have to be ready to learn. When there was no SRO in the school, he said the incidents of misbehavior increased. Keith said there is a drop in enrollment at Selma High School as “parents are pulling their kids out of the school taking them somewhere else because of what’s going on there.” Keith said now SROs interact with the principals and students to help create understanding, which helps keep order. Besides bad behavior in class, Collier also wants SROs in the schools in the case of an active shooter situation. Det. Dorothy Cowan, Director of the Police Athletic League program, joined Collier on the Police Beat program to share how her program works to communicate with students much like SROs. Cowan, who is in her third decade with Selma police, said if kids are in the PALs center playing basketball with the police officers, they are not out on the streets, and they soon view the police as their friend, and when something is happening on the streets, the kids are more likely to tell the officers.
This interaction and developing these friendships with the kids, both Cowan and Keith said, are imperative to fighting crime. These relationships go a long way to keeping the kids off the streets and from making wrong decisions. Many of the outreach programs like Weed and Seed and Coffee with a Cop are designed to open the same avenues of communications between the public and the police. Collier said that along with providing funding for the SROs, the grants will allow for a greater contribution to the PALs program from the Police Department. He said Cowan goes above and beyond in her work soliciting donations and contributions from businesses and from the general public, as well as obtaining grants for the program. This money is used for many activities that the PALs program will hold for the kids. One is an annual camping trip, but mostly for travel expenses when the PALs basketball team travels out of town for games. Cowan said donations and contributions are much appreciated. For more information, visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ SelmaPAL/ or contact Cowan at dcowan@selma-al.gov or call (334) 874-5596. The office is located at 145 College Drive in Selma.
Selma's Sanders sisters start campaign to create a 'Bridge of Hope HQ' BY CINDY FISHER Selma Sun Staff The Sanders sisters are raising money to create the “Bridge of Hope Headquarters” in Selma. Ainka Sanders Jackson and Malika Sanders Fortier and their nonprofit Selma Center for Non-Violence, Truth and Reconciliation started an online Crowdrise page through GoFundMe last month with plans of raising $75,000 to renovate a former restaurant at 8 Mulberry Road into a safe haven for Selma’s teens. The property they call Healing Waters Retreat, which sits along the Alabama
River only a block away from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, will also serve as a place for healthy discussions about how to work together to improve Selma and Dallas County. To start off the campaign, the Center for Non-Violence, Truth and Reconciliation released a song called “Better Selma” that is available on music streaming services including iTunes and Spotify. Ainka Jackson, who serves as executive director of the Center for Non-Violence, Truth and Reconciliation, lists dreary statistics about Dallas County being ranked the poorest county in the state and Selma being among the top 10 most dangerous places to live.
But she says the county can be fixed. “We have to address the economics and the broken relationships … because we are in need of healing,” she said. Malika Fortier, who was recently voted into the state Senate seat her father Hank Sanders held for decades, said there was much to do in Selma when they grew up, like bowling and roller skating, but those places are closed now. There is no community center with activities for today’s teens to keep them out of trouble, she said. “Idle minds are the devil’s workshop,” Fortier said.
Sisters and Selma natives Ainka Jackson and Malika Fortier are raising funds to renovate a former restaurant into the “Bridge of Hope Headquarters.” Photo by Joni Grindstaff
The Center for Non-Violence, Truth and Reconciliation has many community volunteers who work with Ainka Jackson, center. Photo provided.
With that in mind, the plan is to bring together the nonprofit sector, businesses and government to form the Bridge of Hope Headquarters. In the plans, the former restaurant would become a 1950s-themed ice cream shop that encourages entrepreneurship in young residents. It would also host late-night weekend games and sports activities, and a recording studio for young people. It also will be a place to “facilitate Deliberative Dialogue among residents, encouraging them to gather information to make wise decisions (instead of just taking sides) about rebuild-
ing this community with so many assets, like the nearby river front as well as so many challenges,” the GoFundMe page says. “The project would bring together different notfor-profits, elected officials, churches and schools to work together.” “Selma gave a gift to the whole country,” Fortier said. “We’re asking for people to give a gift back to Selma so we can build a place of hope for Selma.” The Center for NonViolence, Truth and Reconciliation has held the belief that hope needs to be built “out of the conflict and chaos that some locals believe
ensues from old wounds that never healed,” the page says. The Center also believes “that all things are possible in the appointed time” – and that that time is now. The Center bought the empty restaurant space on Mulberry in the last few years, and they use it for offices and meetings for the Center for Non-Violence, Truth and Reconciliation. The Center will house programs to provide residents with skills for work and life. They want to identify influencers in the community, both good and bad, and bring them together to change the culture.
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