It must have felt like a fantasy to the Los Angeles Police Department brass as they waded into the sea of blue-uniformed teens swarming the breakfast buffet at the department's Ahmanson Training Center. There were "Yes, sirs" and "No, sirs" all around, and applause every time a police officer was introduced to the teenage crowd.
The occasion last week was the department's inaugural Youth Leadership Day, the brainchild of Deputy Chief Earl Paysinger, who sent 230 Police Explorer Scouts off for the day with 100 high-ranking officers to "heighten their sense of affiliation with the department."
Chief William J. Bratton, in his speech to the group, lightheartedly acknowledged the day's "propaganda" value. But it struck me as much more: a shift in perspective, akin to lighting a candle in the dark.
Paysinger said it best, as we surveyed the crowd: "There are 90,000 kids in the county who belong to gangs. But there are 2 million more who don't. They deserve to be celebrated."
Until last week, I didn't know much about Explorer Scouts. They were the teens doing crowd control at the neighborhood holiday parade and directing traffic at the local farmers market, service bars pinned to their neatly pressed shirts and police caps perched on child-sized heads.
The program is a junior version of the department, with an academy course, tactical training, fitness drills and promotional exams. Every division has a post, and most of the kids are minorities from the tougher parts of town.
For the department, it's a recruitment tool, a way to groom youths for law enforcement; safeguarding a pool of teens without bad attitudes or criminal records.
Teens like Natasha Ikejiri, a Granada Hills Charter High School senior whose Leadership Day jaunt was a ride on a fire boat with Police and Fire Department officers.
Natasha, 17, joined the Explorers with her two brothers George and Andrew -- they're triplets -- because her mother nagged her and the Devonshire Division post "needed more females. . . . I kept saying 'It's not for me. It's not for me,' " she recalled.
But in two years, she's risen through the ranks to become a lieutenant. "Now I'm giving orders to my brother," she said. This weekend, her squad competed in Pasadena against 24 other police departments and took first place in the obstacle course and a drill that involved subduing an "active shooter."
