“What are you going to do, the next time you see someone different from you?” asked a poem written by Prairie High School senior Faith Prospere and Clark County Sheriff’s Office School Resource Officer (SRO) Chelsea Quiggle for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The Prairie High School Black Student Union and Quiggle educated middle school students about MLK Day and the American civil rights leader at an assembly on Tuesday, Jan. 21, at Daybreak Middle School. In the assembly, Quiggle and Prospere stood side by side to share a poem they wrote together that highlights Martin Luther King Jr.’s work to unify police officers and the Black community. King was a prominent civil rights advocate and Baptist minister who promoted equality for people of color in the United States by practicing nonviolent resistance and disobedience before his assassination in 1968.
Prospere’s said her opinion about police officers changed after speaking to an officer at her former school as well as through research on Martin Luther King Jr.’s work with law enforcement.
“When I went to Kelso, there was a police officer named officer Brown, and I used to avoid him all the time in the hallway until one day he chased me down and he was like, ‘Why do you avoid me all the time?’ And I said ‘because you’re a police officer and I’m Black. We don’t get along,’ ” Prospere recalled. “And I just assumed just because of the uniform that he was a bad person and that he wanted to hurt me, and we had a conversation about it, and I’ve had multiple conversations with [Quiggle], and it really wanted me to help show people that, hey, I can be friends with her, you can do it, too.”
Prospere added that after some research on Martin Luther King Jr.’s work with police officers, she wanted to incorporate that into presentation at the assembly.
“I went up to [Quiggle] in the beginning of the school year, and I asked her to be a part of the assembly, and then the poem came to mind, ” Prospere said.
Prospere said that Quiggle is her favorite person ever and like a sister and expressed her gratitude toward Quiggle for becoming the Prairie school resource officer.
Quiggle said she came to Prairie High School with a goal in mind to rebuild relationships with students and help bridge the gap that’s occurred over the last few years. Prairie High School has been without an SRO since 2020, due to the pandemic and budget and staffing restraints.
“So any opportunity to connect with students and especially to connect with students who feel maybe fear or uneasiness around somebody in my position, I want to take that opportunity to help them understand that we are safe people and we’re somebody you can trust,” Quiggle said.
In the poem, a few lines highlight the unity between Quiggle and Prospere:
“Jack Warren
a police captain
A friend of Martin Luther King
A friend of the black community
“Dr. King proved not only that it is possible to be friends with police officers
But also that not all cops are villains
“Although we’re different,
We’re united.
“We have the privilege of standing before you all today
Not only as a police officer and a black person
But also as two people who see past what the other looks like on the outside
And two people who accept the other just as they are
That is what MLK’s dream was about.”
Prospere said an important piece of the poem is understanding what the police and sheriff’s uniform represents.
“It’s not something that they’re wearing because they want to hurt us, you know,” she said. “They’re wearing it because they want to protect us. They want to be there for us. I don’t have the color of my skin because I want to be a bully or anything, you know. I’m a good person just because I want to be. I’m not a bad person because of the color of my skin. She’s not a bad person because of the uniform she’s wearing. So why should we get judged based on other people’s actions?”
Quiggle said that she most remembers MLK’s comments on people being judged on the content of their character, “who you are as a person versus what’s on the exterior,” she said.
“Because there’s things we can or can’t change about ourselves, but it doesn’t dictate who we are. How we act and how we treat people really defines who we are as people,” she said.
