“I’m still confused,” a girl said one day. What she was confused about was all the other cops besides Burge who had tortured. “How did they not go to jail?”

Douglas gave a tight smile, the smile of a person trying not to give in to the unpleasantness of the news they had to deliver. “You expect things to work the way they’re supposed to work, not the way they actually work,” she said.

Douglas pushed Takeaway One because she wanted her students to understand the truth of the world they lived in—but also, it was clear, because she wanted them to be safe. More than once, she drew her students’ attention to the case of Marcus Wiggins, a black thirteen-year-old tortured by the Midnight Crew. “Why would they torture a thirteen-year-old? Why are they torturing a thirteen-year-old? I need an answer.”

A Latino boy in the front row began to venture a response. “For suspected—”

Douglas cut him off. “But why? I want you to look at everybody in this room. ”

He hesitated. “Maybe… because they can. They’re using their authority.”

Douglas nodded, then pushed the point a step further. You might think of yourself as kids, she told them, but that didn’t mean “they” would see you that way too. “You might be playing. You might think: I’m a kid. But no.” This was why it was important for them to be careful. Important not to joke around—not to act like kids—in the presence of cops. Important not to assume that things work the way they’re supposed to work. During a discussion about the Ronald Kitchen case, a rail-thin boy in what looked to me like an updated version of nineties skater wear posed a question: “Like, what was special about Kitchen so the police went after him versus any other kid on the block?”

“I don’t want to say this,” said Douglas. “But it could happen to you.”

“It doesn’t seem that way,” he said.

“But it is that way,” said Douglas.