A Day in the Life of an Academy Recruit: Will: Skills Class Update…!

We’re half-way through week 13 and it’s unbelievable how quickly time is passing (part of this is a result of the very small amount of time we have to reflect on this fact). BUT, for the last two weeks it feels as if we’ve been studying what most people think of as real police work. To say it’s been fun is an understatement. I thought I’d give a kind of overview…

Most of last week was comprised of CSI type stuff. As we were told, many times, you can’t take the burned-in image of a victim’s killer from their retinas, BUT, there are some seriously cool tools that we’ll have at our disposal. Think fingerprints. Think national DNA databases. Think microscopic fiber analysis. (Our crime scene investigators are every bit as attractive and engaging as Gill Grissom and the like, by the way).

Fingerprinting!

Footprints in the snow!!!

Our days on the firing range have been a ton of fun. We’ve done a bit of work on the tactical range (multiple close-range targets set up to mimic real-life shooting scenarios, barricades, mock building walls, mock active-shooter scenarios, etc). Today was a hoot: simulated active shooter scenario (school shooting) complete with instructors banging on buckets like drums, shouting at you with blow horns, grabbing at you and hitting you every time you were ‘shot’. Stress!

We go through these scenarios one at a time and every time, before it’s your turn, your stomach churns with butterflies. You wait. You plan your actions. You self-talk. It never fails though…afterward, when the screaming’s stopped, you immediately want to run the course all over again for the fun of it. (And I’ll have pics of today’s fun posted on my next entry, for sure).

(Oh, and before I forget, I’d like to thank Big Daddy (Jones) for some excellent advice on what not to do on the driving range…and for what definitely to do during a good vehicle contact!)

We’ve also begun fully evolved, more realistic police contact scenario training. Vehicle and pedestrian stops that bring it ALL into play; everything we’ve learned over the last 3 months (law, communication techniques, arrest control, firearms, etc). These are challenging, to say the least. Who ever said police work was going to be easy? The pics below are from last week’s pedestrian contacts class. Trent, Josh, Molly and Laura all played our contact ‘subjects’. They were good…take a look at what Trent’s wearing! All of these exercises are structured to simulate possible challenging ‘realistic’ encounters. We all biff it on these in one way or another (I need to work on my post-arrest suspect searches, for instance) but we all seriously value these learning experiences.

Trent doing way too good a job playing a stumbling drunk in the middle of the highway.