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.

More pedestrian contacts

Vehicle Contacts! These are tougher than you think…

Preparing to contact a citizen in a car

A little advice from a veteran instructor

A laugh to lighten the mood

The Myth of Sisyphus, Version 2.0

I just got a text from a buddy of mine who ran the Boston Marathon today. The guy finished it in 3:08, which, for those of you out there who don’t run, is a GREAT time. (I typically run a mile in a long distance run at around a 7:30 pace. My friend did the entire marathon, 26.2 miles, averaging something like 6:55 per mile!). I do have a point here…

Vehicle Searches!

Anything you do, anything you think you’re good at, anything you’ve been told you’re good at…well, there’s someone out there, probably many people out there who are better at it than you.

The connection that I’m making here between law enforcement, this academy, and this somewhat (negative) observation is this: Our instructors, our coordinators, our peers – they’ve all been working pretty hard to get it into our heads that the only way to succeed in this, the only way to grow, the only way to shine is to keep at it. Keep trying. Keep learning, keep practicing, keep getting better. Keep fighting.

Ian and Chris about to be made examples of…
(but doing an awesome job, as always…our stars from Arvada).

No one can be a master of all his trades, but through hard work, through grit and sweat and blood we can get better, and we can get close to mastery. If we’ve been taught anything these last 12 weeks, we’ve been taught that a continuous pursuit of perfection is absolutely necessary for this line of work…

The Sgt. giving us a tour of the old JeffCo Jail on a cold, wet morning. I bet there were many (clients) who felt a bit cold and wet when they entered into that building…

(Pushups are a favorite tool of our coordinators, along with a few choice words spoken at high decibel levels, in instilling this in us).

Looking at the graffiti scratched into an old dining table in the jail.
I won’t be posting what it actually said. :)

And behind this pursuit can only lie a kind of boiling determination. Sure, the guy that you have to lay hands on to arrest may have just spent the last 10 years pumping iron 4 hours a day in a Department of Corrections bed and breakfast, but he’s not going to care, he’s not going to want to win as much as you. And consequently, naturally, undoubtedly – he won’t.

“A Failure of Memory …”

Ok, so this image is a few weeks old, but I was scrolling through my picture files and was surprised that I hadn’t posted it (time flies, and distractions happen, in law enforcement academies!). This was a good experience. As our instructors said, if you can shoot well in a blizzard, imagine how you’ll shoot when it’s 72 degrees and sunny.

And, the picture really doesn’t have to do with this posting, but hey, it’s a good one.

For most of the evening I’ve been grinding the mental gears, attempting to will a good posting into existence. Imagine my mind as an old Ford truck…from the 60’s maybe, rusting away in a field. An old farmer gets in, starts the engine grudgingly and painfully puts it in gear, lets out of the clutch with a squeal and slowly, cacophonously, the machine creeps along through the dust and mud and the weeds…

My brain hurts.

I read somewhere once which spoke to the lack of pain receptors in the human brain. I think now that this was fictitious. Some doctoral student playing a prank. My brain really does hurt.

In previous postings I’ve touched on the shear amount of information we’re required to learn and more accurately MEMORIZE during this academy, but I’ve only hinted…

Currently I’m working on my last column of street rotations (streets in JeffCo along with their block numbers…approximately 300 streets in all). I’m working on memorizing the Bill of Rights and our firearms safety rules verbatim. I have the JCSO mission statement, values, and vision statement down (I think) as well as most of the names of departmental command staff. That leaves the material for our fifth test due tomorrow, including mountains of traffic code, various facts on domestic terrorist groups, performance data on less-lethal weapons as well as strategies in dealing with suspect interrogations and confessions.

We’ve all been weaned off of bottles and mere glasses full of the stuff – we take our mental nourishment through fire hoses ONLY these days.

And, incidentally, the title of this posting – “A Failure of Memory…”. Well, when we miss a question on a quiz or a test we’re required to write out a disciplinary memo to our coordinator elaborating on the REASONS behind that (failure). I’ve found myself relying on this phrase more often than I’d like to admit. It is, however, accurate. It’s honest. (Now if I could just get it to NEVER happen again…!)

“For I am Involved in Mankind…”

Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was titled after this poem. It’s one of my favorites (and incidentally, one of Sen. John McCain’s too, I read somewhere once).

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

John Donne, 1624

There are some lines in the poem that stand out, I think.

During the last two weeks, seven law enforcement officers across the country died in the line of duty, in violent incidents perpetrated by individuals acting alone, who simply didn’t care – neither for the lives of fellow men and women, nor for their own (lives granted them by their mothers, their fathers, their God … i.e. someone other than themselves), and these individuals made the decision to stop the beating hearts of people who DID (care).

“Each man’s death diminishes me…”

As I slowly make progress toward the badge, these things begin to be felt more; their significance grows inside. Each of my classmates feels the same way. Good people.

Hmm.

That’s it. That’s all I wanted to say. I tried thinking of someway to ‘wrap’ up an entry on senseless violence, but in the end concluded that there isn’t a moral, there isn’t a lesson, there isn’t even any kind of statement that can be made. I think the best we can do is to feel it. To remember it. To not let the tragedies be felt and forgotten, to not let the sufferers of those tragedies be set apart as “Islands…Entire of themselves.”

Week 8 Done and Gone.

The FUN has BEGUN!!! (Now If I Only Had Time to Reflect on That…)

I had dinner with my parents this weekend.

We met in Castle Rock at this little, quiet place that has the distinction for us as being the place my sister broke the news of her engagement (to a great guy who treats her very well, and who is making an exceptional addition to the Air Force’s pilot corps as the pilot jock that every little boy wanted to be when he was 8…).

But yes. 8 Weeks. As the parents grilled me on the last two months (over a pretty good beer) I suddenly realized (again) that my life has become this, and this alone. I touched on this theme a bit in a previous posting, but it’s a pretty significant topic, I think…

I’m having fun, undoubtedly, and the days have become increasingly engaging. Firearms (with live ammo, in a blizzard this week!), Arrest Control, Investigative Procedures, etc … it’s all become much more ‘real’. But the tendency has been for me to lose perspective a bit as the intensity has increased – to lose sight of the fact that this stuff that we’re doing, this knowledge we’re gaining, this fun we’re having – is inherently cool and at the same time very, very serious (see my Serious Business post from Week 1).

There’s a strong tendency to get caught up in the work, in the activity, in the excitement and the anxiety…

After my workout tonight, driving home from the gym, I made a kind of pact with myself to step back a bit from time to time during the next 3 months and breathe it in, soak it in, ‘smell it’ so to speak. A transition, a change, a pretty hefty transmutation is happening in the lives of every one of my classmates right now. I’ll still get caught up in it, but I’m going to try and be present for it, to be present fully during this change, and hopefully learn a bit more in the process.

(And have a bit more fun too…)

West Metro Swat gave a pretty wicked presentation, one of the best we’ve had the last two months. Here’s the county’s armored personnel carrier. Cool, eh?

The APC’s baby brother.

Every one of us was deeply impressed with the SWAT team members who presented the class. I know that many of us (me included) discovered a bit of hero-worship on our faces as the day ended.

The Sergeant sets off a “Flash Bang” explosive device in the Academy parking lot, which blew a few car alarms :)

And stay tuned…for possible video next posting!

Ego Trips…(down long, lonely desert highways…in reverse)

I experienced an insight of sorts this week that I wanted to share; an insight on the heals of some pretty gnarly embarrassments (these are the BEST kind!).

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So, briefly, I have this episode of the “Simpsons” in my mind right now. Chief Wiggum is holding a ‘citizen’s police academy’ I believe. Some nut screams in frustration, “But when do we get our freakin’ GUNS!?!?” and Chief Wiggum responds, “Later this afternoon…first we have to break you down, then build you up, then break you down again…and if we have time, build you back up…”

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(Here’s a link for all you nerds out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Springfield_Connection )

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So, we’ve all heard these ubiquitous references in pop culture to militaristic training regimes involving the ‘breaking down’ of a recruit’s ego and the subsequent ‘re-building’ of said ego. I usually took these references with a grain of salt…as in “What the heck does that really MEAN?!?”

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I think I have a hunch…(but first, a picture or two or three):

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Mid-action shots with weird, mid-action faces…it wouldn’t be an HONEST blog without them.

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Chris is our token “I wouldn’t wanna be up against HIM” classmate.

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Mike with a battle wound. I asked him to look scary, by the way. He’s really a kitten in person.

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Ok, so back to it. Egos.

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A couple of weeks ago, just when I thought I had this groove DOWN, I lost my ID badge. Not a big deal, right? Well, considering it was also an access card to the county JAIL, and considering that I thought there was a possibility that I had lost it on the premises of this JAIL, where inmates could possibly find it and USE it …

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Embarrassment.

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And then this week. We began firearms training. Major fun, by the way. But at some point I get to thinking, again, that I had the groove down and at some point I get called up in front of 60+ people to battle another classmate (Lance!) in a malfunction clearing competition*, and at some point during this 2 second BATTLE ROYALE my mind goes completely blank and for at least 5 seconds I just stand there like a dumbfounded idiot and…

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Embarrassment.

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The whole point is that you can’t approach this with an ego. It WILL be squashed, like a bug; by circumstance, and certainly by the academy coordinators, who are known to wear some pretty gruesome, heavy, (polished, of course) bug-squashing boots. The whole ‘breaking down’ of the ego thing…it’s to teach honesty, to teach humility, to teach objectivity. I have this sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that a humble, objective deputy/officer who can enter into a chaotic, possibly life threatening situation without EGO, without SELF-consciousness, would be a pretty effective deputy indeed…

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No ego, no problem. And consequently (as an attractive thought for me right now); no ego, no embarrassment?

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(Malfunction clearing = drills/techniques to clear a weapon of jammed rounds which would prevent the weapon from firing, i.e. bad thing in a fire fight. We 'competed' for time in this case.)

A Pretty Tough Schedule

It's been a while since I've posted, and for that I apologize. Who knew that this would be so challenging? I was told, but didn't REALLY believe...

Between the academics, the policy and statute memorization, the daily prep work involving uniforms, equipment, study materials (and the disciplinary memos, ha) – time is a rare commodity these days.I think it's important for folks who might be interested in applying for the academy to be aware of just how much work is involved. And, if you're accepted, be fully PREPARED.My schedule has become solely centered on THIS, and this alone. A typical schedule for me is as such:

515 - 700
Preparation for class, materials organization, breakfast, shower, etc

700 - 730
Drive to the Academy

730 - 800
Class preparation, boot shining, de-linting, class evaluations

800 - 1700
Class!

1700 - 1830
PT! (Either formal, with the class, or without, on my own)

1830 - 1900
Drive home

1900 - 2000
Dinner/Rest/etc

2000 - 2200
Study! Prepare for tomorrow!

Realistically, I have about an hour of 'free' time during a typical day, and usually it's just enough to recover a bit of energy for the next gig. AND, I'm single...some of my classmates with families....well, I'll just say they have my respect.

So, the point, again: Be prepared to set aside 5 months of your life for THIS, and for THIS alone.(It will, however, be worth it of course...)

*Coming soon* - Arrest Control! Firearms Training! With Pics!