Cyberbullying Beat Intro Voiceover 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Interview Tawana Waugh 00:08 This is Tawana Waugh with the COPS Office. With us today is Corporal Jim Toumey with the Arlington Virginia Police Department. Corporal Toumey is here with us to talk to us about cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is a topic that has gained increased media interest over the past year, and many law enforcement agencies have struggled to find ways to deal with this issue. Can you speak briefly about the role police officers can play in this conversation, and the roles they should take within their communities to help increase awareness? Corporal Jim Toumey 00:40 Sure. Police officers can play a critical role in the conversation of cyberbullying. Just as the community, parents, and schools are very key aspects of coming up with ways to get the word out and prevent cyberbullying, if you don’t have the police department there, you’re missing a key stone in the foundation. As we all know if the foundation isn’t on solid ground you can’t really build upon it. If everybody is part of the conversation—including police officers and police departments—that foundation is strong, everybody’s playing on the same page. So ultimately when it does come up—when cyberbullying does come up into the police officer’s presence because something’s just gotten a little bit out of control, everybody’s playing with the same set of rules and the same knowledge so that nobody’s shocked by what’s going on. Tawana 01:24 As the school resource officer at Yorktown High School and an officer of the Arlington County Police Department, you have help develop an initiative that promotes police officers partnering with local teachers in an effort to stop bullying. Can you tell us a little bit about this program? Jim 01:41 The program that I use in Arlington county with the schools is a program that was developed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and their NetSmartz Program. It is a great program, probably one of the best ones that I’ve seen. What it does—it has three different components. It’s got a parent component, a middle school/high school component, and a component they call Tweenie which is basically your elementary school component. It works great, because they developed this with teachers, school psychologists, school counselors, and with students as well. And what they found is, that students don’t like to listen to people just talk and talk and talk, so right at the point where students start to drift off there’s a video, and the video kind of wraps up everything that the presenter has kind of gone over. It’s perfect, ‘cause they get back engaged into the program, and then you move right into the next topic. What’s also nice about this program is, even though that there is a script that you can follow—a 40 minute, 45 minute script—you can kind of go off that script a little bit, and I do quite frequently, and it makes it nice ‘cause you can do a questions and answers sessions while you go into the middle of the topic. It makes a very fluid, very not-formal conversation for the kids, and it’s kind of nice. In the effort with the teachers—they give us some class time. It’s very hard nowadays with the way public schools are set up, they’re so crammed with stuff they have to get done that they have very limited time that we can do these programs, and 45 minutes is a huge chunk of their day, it’s basically one entire class period. With the partnering with them, they allow us to come into their classrooms and kind of commandeer it for a little bit so we can go over the topic of cyberbullying. Tawana 03:21 How has the program been received by school officials, law enforcement, and the students? Jim 03:25 The program’s been receiving great reviews from both the students and the schools, as well as my own department. Parents are actually hugely supportive of this program. I don’t even teach the Tweens or the parent component, I just show everybody the same middle school/high school component, because the elementary kids are advancing at such a fast age and they’re doing things that already middle school kids are just learning how to do. So when you show them the middle school program it’s not going in too advanced, that information that they don’t need to know—they already know it. I show the parents the exact same one so that they can see what we’re showing to their kids, and it does spark a lot of debate amongst the parents ‘cause a lot of them don’t know what their kids are doing on Facebook, on Twitter, on their cellphones, or iPads and their computers. It is been very well received. And the schools enjoy it too, because it gets them to get the word out about inappropriate cyberbullying and inappropriate stuff that their putting on the internet in general. So the school really enjoys the overall aspect of the police department coming in and kind of teaching their children. Tawana: 04:30 What advice would you have for other police departments wanting to develop partnerships with their local school district in order to develop an anti-bullying program of their own? Jim 04:39 One of the advice I’d give is to go onto NetSmartz.org and look at their program. The program’s already been done—it’s already been basically vetted through school students, through school officials as being a safe program to show. There was a program that, when I gave to the teachers, we had actual Arlington public school data—bullying data—on there, and a lot of school districts don’t like that data to get out to the public because it makes them appear that they have issues. Every school district’s got issues when it comes to bullying, it’s not just one school or another, but they don’t want that data out. The NetSmartz program is very neutral, it’s more of a getting the word out “don’t do this” “don’t do that.” The biggest advice is don’t be disheartened by the fact that some schools might not want you to come in right away—just because it is a time issue, and they are crunched—they have a lot of stuff that they do have to do, ‘specially at the high school level where they have to do not only driving, drinking, and drug classes, but they also want to cram this in there as well and sometimes it just doesn’t all fit in one year. But I would definitely get with the schools and get with your administrators at your buildings, ‘specially if you’re a school resource officer, and use the resources that you have. Most police departments like Arlington have resource officers—which are police officers—inside middle school and high school level, and they work very well with the counselors and the administrators and know what they want, what they don’t want, and show them this program— the NetSmartz program—and see if they like it. See if you can maybe tweak it a little bit until you kind of, to adjust to what the school wants. Tawana 06:17 Well thank you Jim, for providing us with your expertise and your time Jim 06:21 Thank you. Beat Exit Voiceover: 06:22 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. Disclaimer 06:39 The opinions contained herein are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT####