- [Narrator] Tonight, the debate over police in Rhode Island schools.

- We believe that no kid, no matter what they do, barring it being a really serious offense, deserves to be met with the police officer with a gun.

- Of course, they should be armed because how are they going to neutralize a threat if they are not armed?

- [Narrator] And a Christmas tradition in Attleboro, a visit to La Salette Shrine.

- You know, the minute you get to the lights, it's like you don't think of anything but the joy and the happiness that Christmas brings around this time of year.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - Good evening and welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

There is no shortage of stories on school violence in America, stories that have often shaken parents and communities to the core.

- The controversy over having police officers in schools has sparked a sharp debate for a couple of decades now.

And Rhode Island is no exception.

For some, they provide crucial protection for children.

While others argue it's time to stop policing schools.

Contributor, Steph Machado, has the story.

(engine rattling) - When the school bus rolls up- - Good boy.

- [Steph] It's time to get to work for Brody, this chocolate English lab and sworn canine officer of the Bristol Police Department.

- Brody.

- Brody is not your usual police canine.

He doesn't sniff for drugs.

He's not going to take down a bad guy.

- Have a great day, guys.

- [Steph] He's a comfort and therapy dog who rarely leaves the side of his handler, Officer Keith Medeiros.

- Brody's typical workday is we wake up, we get ready for work, and we come to the schools.

We're here for drop off.

We're here for pickup.

We go into the schools.

We go into the classrooms.

But our main focus is just to make everybody have a better day.

Good morning.

Have a good day.

- [Steph] Medeiros has been a Bristol police officer for more than 20 years, but became a school resource officer in 2012.

In 2020, he pitched the idea of getting a therapy dog to his police chief.

Medeiros says Brody shines when students are having mental health crises, something that was even more important after the pandemic.

- We've had kids that were in crisis that could take 20, 30, 45 minutes, maybe even an hour, to get them back into a classroom.

For adults and for the supervisors and all the resources that they have to help this child, within five minutes of being with Brody, they're ready to go back into a classroom.

- [Steph] To say Brody is popular with students would be an understatement.

- Brody!

- Brody!

- [Steph] His Instagram page has more than 12,000 followers and he even has his own coloring book, which depicts him snoozing all the way through his live-streamed swearing in ceremony back in 2020.

And he's helped Officer Medeiros connect better with students.

- I noticed that in the high school kids that would not ever talk to a police officer or kids that would not ever talk to me, that I'd never had a dialogue with them, bringing Brody into that school all of a sudden I was having dialogue with the kids that I never interacted with.

- [Steph] Medeiros, who doesn't wear his police uniform to work, is part of the evolving role of school resource officers, commonly known as SROs.

- Over the past, you know, 10, 11 years that I've been an SRO, I've seen that we are more educated, we have more training.

- [Steph] Police officers in schools have been around in some capacity since the 1950s.

- [Reporter] Amid the gunshots and bomb blasts, hundreds of students ran for their lives, - [Steph] But they exploded in prevalence after the 1999 Columbine School shooting in Colorado with the federal government providing grants so more schools could have officers present.

Controversy has surrounded their use over the years, especially when it comes to student discipline.

- If a child's wearing a hat, if a child is walking the halls, it's not an SROs job to tell them to take their hat off or tell them to get back to class.

That's an administrative thing.

That's a school policy.

We only enforce laws that are broken.

We're not there to enforce policies that are broken with the school department.

- [Steph] The policing of schools is part of the concern for civil rights groups like the Black Lives Matter Rhode Island Political Action Committee.

- Teachers in areas that are particularly urban districts, and outside of urban districts as well, will use police officers as a crutch or a opportunity to have outside discipline.

So instead of dealing with the discipline inside of school, they will go to this police officer or this SRO who will then be able to handle the situation.

And, of course, that gets murky when it comes to what the role of an SRO is.

Is it the role of an SRO to keep the school safe?

Or is it to have students that having bad behavior go outside and enter criminal justice systems?

- [Steph] Harrison Tuttle is the group's executive director.

He says he works with urban youth, including the Providence Student Union, groups that are fighting to remove police officers from schools.

- We believe that no kid, no matter what they do, you know, barring it being a really serious offense, deserves to be met with a police officer with a gun.

We have incredible mental health professionals all throughout the state that are able to deescalate without a gun.

And so if we had SROs that were without a gun, we would be more supportive of that.

- So would you be okay with SROs being in schools if they were unarmed?

- Absolutely.

- School resource officers in Rhode Island are armed along with 99.9% of SROs nationwide, according to a US Department of Justice report released last month.

Should school resource officers be armed?

- Of course they should be armed because how are they going to neutralize a threat if they are not armed?

- [Steph] Lawrence Filippelli is the superintendent of the Lincoln Public Schools.

He's also on the Rhode Island School Safety Committee, which discusses how to protect schools from active shooters.

- If there is a true act of violence and someone is trying to gain access to that school and do harm to staff or students, having someone there who can respond in seconds rather than minutes saves lives.

- "Rhode Island PBS Weekly" asked superintendents across the state where they stand on having SROs in their districts.

About half of those who got back to us said they'd prefer to have more SROs, ideally one at each school.

There are roughly 65 SROs in Rhode Island and more than 300 public schools.

Would you like to have an SRO in every school here in Lincoln?

- Ideally that would be nice.

Having an SRO at every level really adds to the budget.

So if a community is going to get behind it, they have to get behind it with funding as well.

- [Steph] Recent polling shows support for SROs in Rhode Island.

A University of Rhode Island survey released in October asked Rhode Island adults about a variety of policy topics, including if they would support legislation to provide state funding for police officers in schools.

57% of those polled either strongly or somewhat approved, while 15% strongly or somewhat disapproved, and 22% were neutral.

- We're not opposed to a model in which police officers get called to schools whenever there's an issue.

We understand the difficulties that schools go through, whether it's person having a gun inside the school or someone that is a threat to others.

That is not what we're contending.

We're contending that the problem is is that we have police officers oftentimes being in higher numbers here in Rhode Island than we actually do social workers.

- The group's opposing SROs use the slogan, "Counselors, not cops," arguing mental health professionals are better equipped to deescalate situations.

So when they say "Counselors, not cops," you would say- - There's absolutely a need for more counselors and school psychologists.

No question about it.

There is an equal need for school resource officers, in my opinion.

- So counselors and cops?

- Yes.

- We're not there to arrest kids.

We're not there to lock people up, like some people think.

We're there to help them.

We would rather educate a child and let them know what the effects of drugs, alcohol, their actions, fighting, acting out.

We want to help them.

We don't wanna hurt them.

- Is there anything that you would change about how we use school resource officers here in Rhode Island?

- I think we need to be careful, right, because at the end of the day, they work for their respective police department, they are a sworn officer of the law, and they report to the chief of police.

So I think some caution is needed as to what they are involved in from an investigative point of view.

And I think school administration needs to know the line between there, right.

So I think school administrators also can't call a SRO in for every little thing, 'cause that's not their role.

Their role is to protect students and to investigate crimes and to be a support for the community - [Steph] In Bristol, Medeiros says he sees the impact of the work every day.

He still remembers Brody's first time truly working.

A child was in crisis and adults were trying to calm him down.

Medeiros asked a social worker if he could approach with Brody.

- This child had never eaten in the lunchroom before because he was very sensitive to sound.

So I asked, you know, on a whim, said I got nothing to lose, "Do you wanna go in the lunchroom and eat lunch with Brody?

You can walk him there."

And this child picked up his lunchbox, took Brody, we walked into the lunchroom, and it was the first time that he had ever eaten lunch in the lunchroom.

It was probably the highlight of my entire career.

- And for the first time last year, SROs in Rhode Island formed the Rhode Island School Resource Officer Association looking to train, share resources and become better at what they do.

Officer Medeiros has been advocating for more police comfort dogs.

There are now more than a dozen in the Ocean State with about half of them working in schools.

You can read more about the story in the "Boston Globe" at globe.com/ri.

Up next, in June, local chef, Sherry Pocknett, became the first indigenous woman to receive the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Northeast.

Pocknett's restaurant is Sly Fox Den Too in Charlestown.

We first interviewed Pocknett in November of 2022 when she shared with us how she celebrates her heritage by foraging, harvesting, and cooking from the land.

Producer Isabella Jibilian has her story.

(tool clanking) - We've been harvesting quahogs for about 12,000 years.

These are one of the first things I learned how to do, harvest quahogs.

- On a warm November morning- (quahog clatters) - Can I borrow your knife, Pekay?

- [Isabella] Chef Sherry Pocknett is making seafood chowder.

- So with quahogs, we used the shell for currency back in the 1600s, 1700s.

We just utilize everything in what we do as far as harvesting from the earth - [Isabella] At her restaurant, Sly Fox Den, quahogs aren't the only thing on the menu.

- Here's the pan, and get scrambled eggs, okay?

(spatula clanking) We make our own venison sausage.

(meat sizzling) We have something called the Indigenous, and we put it on fry bread or we can put it on corn cakes.

You could use duck eggs, you could use quail eggs.

Those are other different eggs that I'm trying to introduce to people.

Beautiful.

We do a duck hash.

We do roasted rabbits.

We do smoked salmon, smoked blue fish, all that kind of stuff.

- [Isabella] The menu is inspired by the flavors of a childhood lived close to the land.

- I grew up in the '60s.

I'm the daughter to both indigenous Wampanoag people, my mom and my dad.

My dad was the chief of our tribe.

He was amazing.

He fought for our aboriginal hunting and fishing rights.

- [Isabella] The Wampanoag nation once included all of southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island.

They were the first indigenous people that the pilgrims met.

Contact with Europeans led to disease and war that killed huge portions of the Wampanoag population and threatened their ways of life.

But preserving those ancient traditions was something that Pocknett learned early on.

- I had, you know, parents that wanted us to learn how to live by the season, how to, you know, take care of ourselves.

We would all pile in my dad's truck, probably in the back of the truck with our dip nets, with our herring nets, and go to the river to see if there was heron in there.

And if there were, saying, "Is the river black?"

means it's loaded.

That means you can jump in the water and you can probably scoop up two heron in each hand.

Fun.

That was like one of the highlights of our year.

- [Isabella] And at home, the catch of the day even made it into her toy oven.

- I was probably six or seven and I got a Suzy Homemaker and that was the best thing that anybody could ever give me.

There would be quahogs in there.

There would be, you know, deer meat or rabbit.

Whatever was in that refrigerator was going in my little pan.

And I put it probably in that Easy-Bake Oven for an hour.

So I knew I was the chef of a lifetime I was gonna be.

- [Isabella] But by the age of nine, she began to feel differently about the food her family was eating, particularly for Thanksgiving dinner.

- We had raccoon.

Okay.

And I love raccoon.

That wasn't...

But no, I want turkey like everybody else.

And it was really embarrassing.

And, you know, when your friends are asking you, "What did you have?"

Well, I had raccoon or I had muskrat or, you know, stuff that my dad literally caught the day before.

- When did you come to appreciate that, oh, this is my indigenous culture and this is something to be proud of?

- Right.

Not until later.

Not until I ran a cultural class myself.

I just didn't realize how valuable the teachings that my parents did until I could talk about it, until someone asked me about, you know.

What about...

When they ask you about your childhood and you tell them that you ate this and that and you hunted and you fished, that's not the average child.

I'm talking about a child starting at the age of three and four.

You know what I mean?

Frogging.

What?

Who don't like frog legs?

(utensil clanging) - [Isabella] Today, Pocknett sees her restaurant as a way of sharing her heritage with everyone.

- Ooh, perfect.

The venison sausage and the corn cakes, I get this every time I come here.

- Y'all gonna have to come back for dinner 'cause I would like to try the rabbit.

(knife cutting) - Many of her dishes have a story behind them.

- [Sherry] Just throw 'em in.

It's gonna create a flavor of its own.

- [Isabella] Like her Three Sisters succotash.

- So three sisters are corn, squash, and beans.

And they were a gift to us from the crow.

The bird (speaks in foreign language).

That's how you say crow, (speaks in foreign language), in my language.

(knife cutting) Thank God we haven't lost our language.

Losing a language is like losing a tribe.

- [Isabella] Another dish speaks to the history of colonization.

Fry bread was originally a Navajo dish invented when they were forcibly relocated.

- The Indians were starving.

They moved them off to a reservation where there's no water, there's no vegetation.

And you know, it was hard to survive.

So they were starving, they were getting sick, so they needed food.

So the government had to...

They dropped off some flour and some lard and told those Indians to figure it out, evidently.

- [Isabella] The problems persist to this very day.

According to the Partnership with Native Americans, at least 60 reservations in the US don't have enough to eat.

The situation has helped spur a movement called food sovereignty.

The idea is revive traditional ways of growing, foraging and cooking food.

- Saving our old recipes and cooking the old way without colonizing our food.

Like we wanna go back to, you know, before Europeans got here, how we're eating.

I'm trying to teach, you know, my people all the different things that there were.

Like, you probably never heard of a Jerusalem artichoke or a sunchoke, right?

Or a ground nut.

A lot of people use that, what is that roundup or weeds?

Do you know those weeds are dandelion greens that they're getting rid of?

That's food and medicine.

(door creaks) - Pocknett believes in using native plants and animals.

- Lots of good stuff out here - Because of health codes, she gets most of her ingredients from distributors.

- You can put what you want in your succotash, - [Isabella] But Pocknett still serves some family-caught fish on the menu.

- So for me, this restaurant here represents, it represents me and my family and it represents my upbringing.

And it represents like a Thanksgiving to teach people that there are more... Like what's in your backyard?

You know what I mean?

I wanna teach people that there's more than chicken steak and pork chops.

Oh gee.

- [Isabella] Now a grandmother, her goal is to pass down her knowledge to at least seven generations.

- Wow.

Nice throw.

You have to know how to sustain yourselves, but you have to know how to teach your children.

Those are all life ways that were passed down to us, you know, through oral history, through oral traditions.

Those are the things that your child is never gonna forget.

And he's gonna be, or she's gonna be happy to teach someone else.

- Finally, tonight, it's one of the biggest holiday light displays in southern New England.

The Christmas Festival of Lights at La Salette Shrine in Attleboro draws hundreds of thousands of people a year.

For many, it's a place to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas.

(festive music) Hundreds of thousands of colorful lights illuminate Our Lady of La Salette Shrine in Attleboro.

The 70th annual Christmas Festival of Lights is a tradition for countless families.

- It's gorgeous.

It's absolutely beautiful, breathtaking.

I love Christmas.

I personally wish that every day was Christmas 'cause people are positive and there's more love and joy and we need a lot of that in the world.

- [Michelle] The theme of this year's display, comfort my people.

Father Flavio Gillio, the director of the Shrine, says it rings true even more so this year.

- Just think about what is happening, Myanmar, Ukraine, and more recently in the Middle East.

And so that's the reason behind the theme of this year, comfort my people.

That is actually coming from the opening of chapter 40 of the prophet Isaiah that gives this majestic, beautiful vision of hope where all the hurt will be healed.

And I think that's exactly what we all need, maybe today more than ever.

- [Michelle] Father Flavio, as he's known, says the festival draws about half a million people every year.

A magical experience that he says spans generations and cultures.

- Yesterday night I met people from Iran that they were speaking Farsi.

It's really unique, I think as an event, because of its ability of bringing together as really one single people of God in name of Jesus the Christ.

That's what Christmas is all about.

Much, much deeper and bigger than the lights.

And so here we enter at our International Creche Museum that has been totally renovated.

- [Michelle] The museum features more than 1500 pieces from all over the world, works of art portraying the nativity scene.

Father Flavio says there's beauty in the different ways artists depict the birth of Jesus.

- It should really raise in us a sense of wonder and marvel about what the incarnation is all about.

- [Michelle] He also showed us a new section in the International Creche Museum.

- What we have been trying to do over here, it's a recreation of the Judean desert, Jerusalem, and the Galilean region at the time of Jesus.

(drill pressing) - [Michelle] Getting the shrine ready for half a million visitors requires a lot of planning.

In September, workers start preparing the grounds.

There are piles of leaves to clear, displays that need to be put up, and nearly 600,000 lights to hang.

(festive music) When the lights are on, the result is a dazzling spectacle.

- It's really special.

I've been coming here my whole life and, you know, memories with my parents, memory with my friends.

And we live so close, so we're so fortunate that we get to come here.

It's just 10 minutes from our house.

So it means a lot.

- You know, when you get to the lights, it's like you don't think of anything but the joy and the happiness that Christmas brings around this time of year.

- [Michelle] Kristen Springham just needs to look at her little girl to be reminded of the magic of Christmas.

And she's expecting her second child next month.

But for her, the joyful season is also an emotional one.

- For me, it's very touching because I lost my dad to lung cancer, so this was his thing.

So I just love being here and seeing this and bringing my daughter.

And then, you know, our next little baby will be coming a long, long time.

- What do you hope people take away from this experience?

- The desire to get to know Christ more and the desire to come back and visit us one more time at least.

- [Michelle] Father Flavio says the shrine can be a sanctuary for people year round, a place to pause and reflect on the life of Jesus.

For some that includes ascending the Holy Stairs meant to represent the 28 steps that Jesus climbed before he was tried by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and crucified.

Father Flavio says there's a rich history to absorb here amidst the glowing lights.

- My beauty is one of the trait of God.

And so the lights hopefully will also make us, I would say, deeper seeker and more aware seeker, that we are all looking for a light able to direct, inspire, motivate, support our lives, our life's journeys, our faith journey.

- That's become one of my favorite holiday traditions.

I'm looking forward to taking my kids soon.

There's something just magical about seeing all of those lights.

- It's beautiful for kids of all ages.

- Absolutely.

And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Michelle San Miguel.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

Until then, please follow us on Facebook and X.

Visit us online too to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly.

Or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Goodnight.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues)