BALTIMORE — There have been 10 years of friendly competition between Baltimore City Police and the youth in Baltimore.
The Project Pneuma program has been challenging these young boys, making sure they stay out of trouble.
Nigel Cooper, who went through the program, says it's changing the future.
“The stigma behind it is so negative; they always talked about it being the low-value students of the school, but all of these kids are bright minds; they just need the right environment to grow," said Nigel Cooper, Program Specialist, Project Pneuma.
The kids say competing against the future officers is something they look forward to all year.
But it's more than fun and games; these boys are learning valuable lessons while bonding with future police officers.
“The narrative is always they can’t get along, but right now we just watched a bunch of POT's and a bunch of students who have never seen each other up until this day come together and just have fun," says Nigel Cooper.
But the boys are not the only ones changing.
“This will help these officer trainees when they become fully commissioned officers right because then there is trust built. They are known in the communities, the boys know them, and so when they come into these communities, it's not an adversarial kind of spirit; it's camaraderie; it's brotherhood; it's sisterhood; and this is what we want and what we have been building for the last ten years,” says Damian Cooper, CEO of Project Pneuma.
In the last 10 years, Cooper says he has been able to help over five thousand young boys.
He shared a story about Husan Harrison, who had a dramatic change through the program.
Not only did the boys get to spend time with the POT's, they also spent four days a week at the police academy working on social and emotional skills.
