I'm a little on the old side so my perspective is a little different. In my neighborhood, the cops were very active at the local grammar school. They made an effort to get to know all the children by their first names and ran a "say no to drugs" program. The children grew very fond of the officers to the point that they asked one of them to participate in their end of the year school play to "arrest" the Big Bad Wolf. It brought down the house to tremendous applause.

The point is -- how children view police depends a lot on their exposure to them. Our community made sure they viewed our police department as their protectors and friends. So we never had these problems.

I don't know what kind of environment would cause a child to even think of throwing rocks at a cop!