THUNDER BAY – On Tuesday, Thunder Bay Police Service’s community inclusion team hosted a gang prevention presentation at École Elsie MacGill Public School.
Const. Bob Simon, Indigenous liaison officer, said it’s bringing awareness to the drugs and gang type of lifestyle.
He said they have been doing these presentations for years and students find them boring, so they made it a little different this year.
“We brought Henry “MC RedCloud” in from Edmonton who's experienced that gang lifestyle before and he's a very talented hip hop artist and actor," Simon said. “He was able to do a workshop with the youth.
“Now this is a third school and we've already hit maybe 1,200 students and it's only Tuesday. It's just amazing to see the students listening and engaging with such a speaker.”
Simon said they’re also working with Kyle Arnold, who has been a partner with the TBPS for about four years.
“His story is very overwhelming," Simon added. "That's one of the stories we show at the beginning, is the video that we've created with the help of the province through their gang funding with this new approach.”
It brings a much broader approach in how students take in the information from people with lived experience, Simon said.
“With these types of presentations, they're attentive, they're watching, but also at the same time there's also some sort of triggering feelings that they never really understood that were there," Simon added.
“We're also preparing the schools to have some proper supports in place so that they can identify those students and make sure that they get the support they need. We also have the youth and family support team from the City of Thunder Bay that come in and help.
“Sometimes we deal with these things at a much later time and as adults, we just don't know what those feelings are. But if we identify them with proper supports in place such as students, then they're able to deal with those right now."
Simon said most students have support at this age.
“If they're not supported at home, they're supported at school. I have kids too and I support them well, but understanding that some families don't have the luxury of that." he added."
“Having those types of supports in place right now at this age, 12, 13, 14 years old, it's probably the best to get them at this time right now rather than when they've moved out and graduated and may not have those supports."
