Redmond police’s personal safety class at RHS focuses on teenaged issues

Published 12:45 pm Wednesday, November 6, 2013

On Tuesday night, dozens of young women filed into the Redmond Performing Arts Center at Redmond High School (RHS).

As they took their seats in the theater, three women stood on stage, waiting to get things started. Once the teens settled down, the women began their presentation with a short video from “Saturday Night Live.” But rather than discuss acting techniques or the challenges of performing for a live audience — an easy assumption to make about a class taking place in a theater — the trio focused on the video topic, which was about children talking to strangers. This segued into a variety of other topics as detectives Annmarie Fein and Natalie D’amico and neighborhood resource officer Julie Beard of the Redmond Police Department (RPD) led a class on women’s personal safety — specifically tailored toward high school-aged girls.

RPD has been offering a women’s personal safety class for a long time. Beard has been on the force for about 10 years and said the course has been offered since before she was hired.

“This is probably one of our longest-running classes,” she said.

Beard said in the past, they have done the class for the Old Firehouse Teen Center, church groups and other community groups but this was the first time they have done anything at the high school. RPD also offers the class to the community at large a few times a year, which brings in 60-70 women.

In preparing for the class at RHS, Beard said she and the other instructors focused the curriculum more on types of situations they see at the high school and middle school levels such as domestic violence and what it looks like in younger relationships.

“It’s not just an adult problem,” she said.

The curriculum also touched on other teen-related issues such as bullying, social media and posting photos on the Internet.

These topics are not covered as much in the adult safety class, Beard said. And while RPD’s women’s personal safety class is geared more toward adult issues such as home safety, she said the class is open to young women, starting around 15 or 16 — although, they leave this up to the discretion of parents.

Beard said every time they teach a women’s class, they receive at least a few emails from people requesting RPD teach a class for their daughters, which is just what they did this week. In making the class specific for young women and not allowing parents or other adults in, Beard said it may help the teens in sharing experiences they may not be comfortable sharing in front of their mother or the adults in their lives.

While what is shared during the class is confidential, Beard said the curriculum is not and RPD is happy to share it with parents if they are concerned with what is being taught.

After the class concluded, RHS freshmen Lezlie Bueno and Larisa Jipa both said they learned a lot about how to stay safe. The two 14-year-olds said they hadn’t really thought about some of the things discussed in the class.

“I’m really glad that I got to hear what they said,” Jipa said.

She said she hadn’t realized before how vulnerable a person could be if they are walking around with their phone out, but Tuesday’s class has her thinking twice about how she conducts herself in public.

Bueno added that she was surprised that walking around with confidence can help prevent a person from being a victim.

Although they learned a lot from Tuesday’s class, Bueno and Jipa said it also would have been nice if they had learned some self-defense techniques. Fein, D’amico and Beard focused on the importance of having a plan and keeping in mind what to do in the case of an attack, but they only went over a few self-defense moves the teens could use.

Jipa said holding an actual self-defense class may attract more interest in the class and increase attendance. Despite this, she said she would definitely recommend the class to others.

“And not just girls,” Jipa said. “Guys, too.”

Beard said one of the biggest questions they have in their safety classes is why they only offer a women’s personal safety class and not a men’s class. She said the safety tips are geared toward both genders, but the women-only classes are requested more and usually better attended. She said if a men’s safety class is requested, they will offer one.