Special to the Vanguard
Tthe 2023 Tribeca Award-winning Silver Podcast Network (Variety) announces their latest venture in the world of audio storytelling. Marking their nonfiction debut, the network proudly presents Violence Week, a four-part audio documentary series about America in the era of school shootings — out August 7, just in time for “Back to School.”
Producer and host Emily Reeves takes us to her hometown of East Lansing, Michigan, where an outbreak of violence and the discovery of a gun at the local high school ignited intense fears of school shootings and a fierce debate over policing in schools.
In the weeks and months following the murder of George Floyd, East Lansing and other school districts across the country removed police from their hallways. But school shootings, along with a post-pandemic rise in violence, have caused some districts to reconsider.
For some in the community, the decision to remove police put kids in greater danger of gun violence; for others, the calls for them to return put students of color at risk. In a community that takes pride in its diversity, East Lansing faced a consequential question: Should police officers return to East Lansing High School?
This timely documentary series explores the current state of the Defund the Police movement in schools through conversations with student journalists, community organizers, school safety experts, police officers, and more. Violence Week confronts the tenderest points and most pressing questions around school safety, policing, racial equity, and what it’s like to be a teenager in the era of school shootings.
Episode Breakdown:
Chapter One: Violence Week — Producer and host Emily Reeves returns to her hometown of East Lansing, Michigan, where the discovery of a gun at the local high school has caused a community crisis. Through interviews with student journalists, Emily guides listeners through the dramatic events of what became known as “Violence Week.” We hear heart-wrenching testimony from students grappling with the fear of school shootings and dissect the community’s heated debate about the decision to remove police from the school.
Chapter Two: Serve and Protect Whom? — Whenever the School Board was questioned on the decision to remove police, they always cited an incident from nearly thirteen years before when a Black student was tased twice in the chest by the school’s police officer. Emily was a student when this happened and she takes us to meet Marcus Reid, the student who was tased, and his mother, Dionnedra. Marcus’s story highlights the well-documented issues with school policing, but efforts for reform have long clashed with the threat of school shootings. This fear proved very real for East Lansing when, in the midst of this community debate, a mass shooting occurred less than a mile away from the high school at Michigan State University, claiming the lives of three students and traumatizing the community.
Chapter Three: Good Cop, Bad Cop — In the aftermath of the tragedy at MSU, we confront a challenging question: in the world’s most heavily-armed country, can anything actually make schools safe? To explore this pressing question, Emily takes listeners to a School Resource Officer Training to debate with a school police officer, and heads to the University of Michigan’s groundbreaking Institute for Firearm Prevention to meet Dr. Justin Heinze, an expert in school safety.
Chapter Four: Back to School — We return to East Lansing to meet with community organizers and the President of the School Board to learn what made the fighting at East Lansing High stop and what this story illuminates about violence prevention. Finally, we return to one final tense School Board meeting to discover if police will return to East Lansing’s halls.
