"I remember the goal was for police officers and youth to come together and figure out where the common ground is, and where everything goes wrong. We actually had a whole discussion where we talked about all the things we can change collectively as a group—as police officers and for ourselves as youth.”
PYC STUDENT
POLICE YOUTH CHALLENGE
SHIFTING PERCEPTIONS THROUGH CHALLENGE
The Police Youth Challenge (PYC) program has been engaging various levels of the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD) and Baltimore City school-aged youth since 2008. Between 2012 and 2015, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, funded by a grant from the Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice, Delinquency and Prevention, conducted a quantitative and qualitative study of the PYC program. Final study results were published. Beginning in January 2016, CBOBS began their own internal quantitative study of the PYC program as it exists currently—with BPD sworn officers embedded in mandatory annual in-service training, and with Baltimore City school-aged youth. Results presented on these pages of the report represent cumulative data collected from pre- and post-course surveys completed by participants.
