Tag: police academy

More Street Stories Tales from the Barking Muse

Police Academy Redux, part 3

Post author By Thonie Hevron
Post date April 9, 2015
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By Gerry Goldshine

Petaluma Police Department, retired

Part 3 (conclusion)
While firearm training was an ongoing process, almost from day one to graduation, emergency vehicle operation training was done over a three day period. All of us were excited because we were going to be the first class to receive training through the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving at what would one day become Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma (Now Sonoma Raceway) . Sadly, we were all sorely disappointed. First of all, the vehicles we were to train with were compact cars, nothing like the big high powered beasts we would be driving with our various departments. None of the vehicles had any emergency equipment installed. There were no flashing lights, no sirens wailing and no blaring radios; none of the distractions that would drive our adrenaline sky-high under actual emergency driving conditions. Then, there were the instructors; they may have been excellent race car drivers but none had any law enforcement background or experience driving emergency vehicles that they could share with us. I suppose the final frustration was that we were not permitted to drive over 35 miles per hour during any phase of this training. I got very proficient at avoiding cones that day and not much more.
The first supplemental training that I received upon graduation was eight hours of training with a Sheriff Office’s driving instructor using retired patrol cars. I’m here to tell you there is no quicker learning experience than losing control one of those high powered vehicles in turn at 65 miles an hour because you didn’t set up properly entering a corner. As a result of that, as well as refresher training, I had confidence in my driving abilities the night I pursued a suspect, who had just stabbed someone as well as trying to run me and other officers off the road, down Highway 101 at over 120 miles per hour. With one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding the microphone to communicate with dispatch, the siren, radio and scanner blared away. At the same time, I had to be aware of my location, that of other responding units, other traffic ahead and around me, changing weather and road conditions. I had to constantly evaluate whether any of those variables would make the safety of the public outweigh the need to continue the pursuit. All of that was something the Bondurant experience failed to provide in their block of training.

As the weeks passed, our sponge-like brains desperately tried to absorb still more material in other subject areas. There were more classes on how to write police reports, criminalistics (that whole CSI thing) and seemed to be everyone’s least favorite subject, traffic accident investigation. There was also training in non-lethal defense methods, which meant some form of CN or CS or what is more commonly known as tear gas. Our practical exercise involved a group of recruits going inside a closed plywood shed accompanied by an instructor where they would expose them to some form of that blessed substance. Unbeknownst to our instructor, a retired FBI Agent, was the fact that I had also been an instructor of essentially the same type of training for many years in the Army. As my group nervously entered the shed, I found a corner, leaned back, slowed and steadied my breathing, knowing what was about to happen. As the effects of the gas hit them, my fellow recruits hit the door like a stampede of water buffaloes. It wasn’t long before it was just the instructor and me staring at each other, him with a very surprised expression. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” he asked after about five minutes had passed and I still hadn’t gone running for the exit. I nodded my head and then explained my background. He sheepishly asked if I wouldn’t mind leaving before him, as it would damage his mystique if I came out last. Still, I had quite the charisma having stayed as long as I did.
As we neared graduation, we were all looking forward towards finally getting practical training on making vehicular stops. Vehicle stops are perhaps the most common, most complex as well as most dangerous activities for a patrol officer. When an officer makes a traffic stop, they have no idea what the driver’s intentions are. Has the driver just committed a crime? Are they armed with a weapon? Are they intoxicated? Are they going to flee when you turn on your emergency lights? In addition, an officer has to exercise proper radio procedure in notifying dispatch of the stop. They have to know something as basic as their location, which can be difficult in a large city or seldom traveled country roads. An officer has to be aware of traffic around them, how they park their patrol vehicle and how they walk up to the car they’ve stopped. An officer also has to pick a strategic spot to stand when they make contact with the driver. While no means the last thing that goes into a traffic stop is how an officer talks to the driver. He can calm a tense situation or escalate a calm one. Though I had already made several hundred vehicle stops while in the Military Police, I was painfully aware that back then, circumstances were far different on a military base than in a city. Not exactly something to inspire confidence in my abilities.
As was the case with my firearms training, I’m still not sure what my expectations were as to training when it came to vehicle or traffic stops, both low risk or “routine” and high risk or “felony” stops. I know I anticipated more than twelve hours of both classroom and practical instruction. Many of us felt the scenarios devised by our instructors for the high risk stop exercises were ridiculously complex and bordered on the impossible. The geekier side of me recalls the Star Trek “Koboyasi Maru” test; for those non-Trekkies, it was a final exam scenario at the Starfleet Academy that was designed to be impossible to survive. I can still vaguely recall my own Academy “Koboyashi Maru” test; it was at night in a poorly lit area. Another recruit and I were to make a car stop on a vehicle that contained four “armed” suspects. As the car came to a stop, all four bailed out of the car and ran off into a darkened field. Our “backup” was many minutes away, leaving us to decide on a course of action. If both of us went after the suspect, the bad guys would have been lying in wait and “killed” us both. If one of us stayed and one pursued the suspect, the chase would have ended with either recruit officer being “shot” or taken hostage. If both officers stayed, then they would be ambushed because the suspects had doubled backed to launch an attack. It was a designed to be a no win scenario which does little to teach or inspire confidence outside of Star Fleet Academy.

Finally, the big day arrived; graduation. I was pleased, having finished fourth out of our graduating class of twenty-four. I walked up to the auditorium stage in my spiffy new Deputy Sheriff uniform, almost ready to bust my buttons with pride. Alongside my two fellow deputies, we received our graduation certificates from the Sheriff. Unlike Mahoney and his bunch of misfits from the Police Academy movies, we weren’t about to be turned loose upon an unsuspecting public. Ahead of us lay nearly another twelve weeks of training in the field under the watch eyes of our Field Training Officers (FTOs).
This was by no means a complete detailed accounting of the academy I attended nor should it be considered a blueprint for what’s taught today. Each recruit or cadet comes away with their own unique litany of successes, failures, achievements and disappointments. Laws change. Police tactics evolve as the threats change. Public perception of law enforcement changes as well. When I was taking Criminal Justice classes in college, the field of Police-Community Relations was new and a response to the turmoil of the Sixties and Seventies. When I had to retire in the late Nineties, Community Oriented Policing was the new buzzword after the public paroxysms that followed the Rodney King incident. While the reasons are many and varied, public perception of Law Enforcement integrity has waned again and once more administrators are looking for ways to shore up community support. Whatever the program’s name or acronym, its ultimate goals will have foundations in the next Police Academy.

Traffic Officer Gerry Goldshine aka T-36 Petaluma Police Department mid-1980's — Traffic Officer Gerry Goldshine
aka T-36
Petaluma Police Department mid-1980’s

Tags Community Oriented Policing, Criminal Justice, criminalistics, dispatch, FBI Agent, firearms training, Military Police, patrol officer, police academy, tear gas

More Street Stories Tales from the Barking Muse

Police Academy Redux, part 2

Post author By Thonie Hevron
Post date April 7, 2015
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By Gerry Goldshine

Petaluma Police Department, retired

Part 2 (part one appeared April 2, 2015)
Beside myself, there were two other recruits from the Sheriff’s Office attending the Academy with me. The largest contingent of recruits was from a Silicon Valley Department of Public Safety. I found it a bit startling when I learned that there were several people in the class who had not been hired by any particular department; in essence, they were “civilians” putting themselves through the training in the hopes that successful completion would make them a more attractive employment prospect. I was also surprised at how small our class was; while I don’t recall the exact number of people who started training, I do know that 24 of us graduated and there was not an especially high attrition rate. Contrary to my fearful expectations, SRJC did indeed run a low stress, twelve-week-long training program whose atmosphere was almost collegial. Having a small class was not necessarily a bad thing because it meant much more one to one interaction with the various instructors. For me, the relaxed training environment took some getting used to and as I was the only recruit with any military training, I often found the lack of discipline and decorum disconcerting.

In 1979, women moving from administrative and non-sworn positions to becoming street officers were still somewhat of a “novelty”. In my class, they numbered less than a half dozen, one of whom was a fellow SCSO recruit. I didn’t find it particularly unsettling to have women among my classmates; they had been moving into “non-traditional” occupational specialties in the Army for some time, so I was quite used to training alongside and working with women. Some of the less enlightened male recruits felt differently and made no effort to hide their opinion that women did not belong, behaving like stereotypical misogynists. One of these “gentlemen” was almost a match to the “Police Academy” character “Mahoney” but with all the negative traits and none of the positive. Like Mahoney, somehow this person managed to make it all the way through training and graduated with the other recruits from his department.

Nearly every training course I’ve taken has had a cast of characters very much like those in the Police Academy movies. There always seemed to be a “Tackleberry” type; the borderline super-macho personality disorder who carried a virtual arsenal in the trunk of his car, always wore camouflage fatigues, often reckless and overeager. In most of the coed classes I been in, there was usually someone very much like the character “Hooks”; a female trainee soft of voice, uncertain of her abilities, and often deferring to men. Invariably there was someone like “Hightower”, the huge muscular guy who was smarter that he appeared, gentler than he seemed and loyal as a puppy dog to his friends. Finally there invariably seemed to be someone like the characters “Sweetchuck” and “Fackler”; this was the guy who tripped over his own feet, walked into closed doors, had a voice that cracked when under stress, lacked a scintilla of common sense and invariably either shot himself in the foot or a fellow classmate in the arse. Looking back, each in their own way, made the training far more interesting as well as more memorable, though at the time I sure many of us considered them with less kindly thoughts.

Having just come out of the Army where highly strenuous physical fitness standards were de rigueur, I found the “PT” at the Academy less than challenging. Unlike the other subject areas, such as criminal law, criminalistics, and firearms, our class did not have an instructor dedicated to physical conditioning. To be sure, we had someone to teach weaponless or hand to hand tactics but no one was assigned for every day physical training or “PT,” something which I had practically lived by over the prior four years in the Army. More often than not, our PT consisted of volleyball or disorganized workouts in the weight room. We did do some running, usually no more than two miles and generally less, during which time nearly everyone complained. For me at that time, a mile run was a warm up as I had been used to running up to five miles in full combat gear in under 40 minutes. I cannot recall if we had to pass a PT test to graduate beyond completing an obstacle course within a specified time frame. I thought then as I do now that we rendered a disservice with such lackadaisical physical conditioning. Aside from the obvious health benefits, maintaining a high state of physical conditioning is essential in surviving street encounters from fist fights to foot pursuits to the use of deadly force. I wasn’t the only recruit that was disconcerted by this and I do know it eventually changed for the better.

Contrary to Zed’s bit of wisdom, my academy class spent a great deal of time in the classroom receiving instruction on subjects ranging from the obvious, such as criminal law to less considered but critical report writing. However, looking back over 35 years later, the very first place to which my Field Training Officer took me, when I was with the Sheriff’s Office, was a Winchell’s Donut shop. Much as I hate to admit it, even to this day many a cop visits the local donut eatery because it’s fast and the coffee is always hot; I guess there was a bit of truth to what Zed had to say.

Donuts aside, we were about to get a great deal of information distilled and condensed into a 12 week time frame. Hours were spent on learning the fundamentals of California Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure. Things that now still seem so basic were new to many of us back then, such as the differences between statutory and case law–both of which we needed to know. What were felony, misdemeanor and infraction type of crimes? We committed to memory the elements of the more commonly used sections of the Penal Code, such as 211 P.C. which is robbery or 459 P.C. which is burglary. We had to know the applicable sections of the Business and Professions Code, particularly those parts dealing with alcoholic beverages. There were the parts of the Health and Safety Code that dealt with drugs, legal and illicit. We had to know the parts of the Welfare and Institutions Code some of which dealt with children and psychiatric cases. Then there was the California Vehicle Code, which covered everything from driving while intoxicated to what color the front turn signals on a particular year car have to be.

All those various codes and laws were just really a foundation and a starting point. Knowing what constituted a violation of a particular law was just part of the process. There followed training on the complex laws governing arrest, probable cause to detain versus probable cause to arrest. We had to know the most up to date court decisions and laws governing arrest, search and seizure. Then there were the courts; traffic, municipal and superior. As a peace officer, you had to know the differences between them and what type of case went to what court. Beyond that, we had to have a working knowledge of how the criminal justice system functioned, from the filing of a criminal complaint to an arraignment to a court or jury trial. If that wasn’t complex enough, there were separate systems for adult and juveniles.
I was not the only one with a college background in Criminal Justice and though we were familiar with much of the material, there was still much that was new in some manner. It was all coming at us fast and furious. Fortunately, there was plenty of practical, hands-on training that got us out of the classroom to stretch our legs and shake out the cobwebs that inevitably formed in our minds. Naturally, we all looked forward to firearms training. Levels of experience with firearms varied greatly among us. Many grew up around guns through hunting and other sporting activities. As a result of my Army training, I had a familiarity with a very wide assortment of weapons, though it seemed highly unlikely I would have need of an anti-tank missile system as a Deputy Sheriff. As a deputy, my duty weapon was going to be a Smith and Wesson Model 66, .357 magnum revolver, which took some adjustment, as my sidearm while in the Military Police was the classic military Model 1911, .45 semi-automatic pistol. In the late seventies and early eighties, firearm training was on the cusp of a revolution, both in technology and theory. I was fortunate to have been exposed to some of it while in the Army. There was interactive training with lasers giving immediate feedback under simulated combat conditions; automated targets made to look like human silhouettes; and shooting in a variety of conditions both in lighting and weather. Our instructors were some of the best, most knowledgeable military people in the world when it came to firearms. Gone were the days of plinking away at a circular stationary target some hundred yards away.

Witchita, Kansas Police Recruit shooting training

Back to my Academy firearms training, I wasn’t expecting our instructor to be someone who split his time between firefighting and police work in the South Bay. Understand that I’m not saying he was a poor instructor; it just was not what I was expecting. While I had qualified “Expert” with nearly every Infantry weapon in the Army, I was only shooting just slightly above average with that .357 pistol. It wasn’t until several years later, when I was a Petaluma Police Officer, a range master discovered while right-handed, I was left eye dominant, which had a great effect on my pistol shooting accuracy. In addition to the live fire range, we also received instruction in what was called “Shoot-Don’t Shoot”, the idea being to develop situational awareness and judgment when employing deadly force. In 1979, our “state of the art” technology for the practical portion of this training consisted of a video projector which showed a scenario on a butcher paper screen and a pistol that fired wax bullets. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one that felt a bit foolish yelling “Freeze!” at that butcher paper.

Read the conclusion of Police Academy Redux on April 9, 2015

Tags .357 pistol, .45 semi-automatic pistol, expert, Infantry, Model 1911, Petaluma, Petaluma Police Department, pistol, police academy, police officer, practice, shooting, Smith and Wesson Model 66 .357 magnum revolver, Sonoma County Sheriff's Department, training

More Street Stories Tales from the Barking Muse

Police Academy – Redux, part 1

Post author By Thonie Hevron
Post date April 2, 2015
1 Comment on Police Academy – Redux, part 1

By Gerry Goldshine

“Cadets, I’d now like to discuss something that’ll be vital for you to know when your, like, out here, on the job, as a police officer. And, that’s the correct way on how to eat a doughnut”

Zed McGlunk, “Police Academy 2”

When I first wrote this piece back in November of 2012, I took a slightly lighthearted look on the training I received when I attended the local regional Police Academy back in 1979. However, since then, almost daily controversial incidents are shaking the Law Enforcement profession to its core. One question I keep hearing with increasing frequency, and that I find myself asking, is what training these officers are receiving. When I attended my academy, in many respects, the curriculum was developed in response to the tumult and unrest that characterized much of the late 1960 and early 1970’s. The pushback against Civil Rights led to riots that tore apart entire cities. The dissatisfaction with the War in Viet Nam led to violent protest that spilled onto university campuses. Radical terrorists with violent agendas led the way to a surge in violent crime. Without delving into a historical dissertation of those troubled times, law enforcement found itself mired in an unprecedented quagmire caught between those wanting social change and those demanding a return to “law and order.” Short staffed, ill-equipped and ill-trained, police officers across the country found themselves the target of dissatisfaction from all sides, often with tragic outcomes. It soon became obvious the old way of policing was not working and change began to take place.
Among its virtues and vices, the first “Police Academy” movie was a satirical look at some of the “revolutionary” adjustments Law Enforcement was undergoing in the early 1980’s. While mostly farcical, one of the few aspects of police work the movie did get right was that first critical training every police officer, deputy sheriff, highway patrol officer, constable and every Federal Agent has to successfully complete, known as “The Academy.” Most all such academies generally have a two-fold purpose. Obviously, the first is to prepare a cadet or recruit both academically and physically for the rigors of law enforcement field work. More feared, the second is to identify and screen out those individuals who prove unsuitable for a career in law enforcement either because of academic deficiencies, an inability to meet the physical training demands or from a variety of other reasons, including psychological.

How this is accomplished can vary widely; sometimes state training regulations mandate what is taught and how. In other instances, departmental training philosophies dictate training methodology. More often than not, it’s a combination of both. Some are near-military in their training approach with high stress and intense discipline as one might find in a “boot” camp. Others take a more relaxed, college campus type approach to training. Budgetary concerns are a significant factor; some agencies either by choice or necessity, put their recruits through the bare minimum of required training hours taking the approach that what is learned “on the job” is more meaningful. Other departments want better rounded recruits and can afford longer training academies.
In California, the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training mandates that a police recruit have a minimum “Basic Training” course of 664 hours. Most all police agencies in California have some type of field training program that follows graduation from an academy; they are usually around 12 weeks long or about 480 hours. Now 1200 hours or more of training may seem like a lot but consider this: in order to get a Cosmetologist license in California an individual must have 1600 hours of classroom instruction and another 3200 hours of formal apprenticeship. That’s a total of over 4800 hours! When’s the last time you read about a beautician taking someone’s life with a mascara wand?
Despite the plethora of books, movies or television shows of the police genre, few if any ever really devote much time to this essential beginners experience in anyway other than in a cursory manner. As every recruit is an individual, they bring to this formative training, differing levels of life experience, work experience, schooling, physical capabilities and emotional maturity. Consequently, while there are common training goals every recruit must meet, each always comes away with a differing perspective of their overall academy experience.
My own academy training took place in late 1979. While what I encountered was unique to me given my background, it does provide a framework for what someone going into the profession and attending a smaller, regional police academy in the early 1980’s would likely encounter.

I was hired by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office in September, 1979, who sent me to the Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) Police Academy in Santa Rosa, California. I had a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from California State University, Los Angeles and had just spent four years in the Army on active duty, most of that time as a commissioned officer. I had actually begun my law enforcement career almost two years earlier when I received a transfer from the Infantry to the Military Police. Still, I was savvy enough to know I had much to learn as there are vast differences between the missions of military law enforcement and civilian.

Joseph Wambaugh author of "The New Centurions" — Joseph Wambaugh author of “The New Centurions”

So, what were my overall expectations and goals as I embarked upon this new training experience? I had been through some of the most stressful, physically demanding and mentally challenging training that the military offered at that time. I had read Joseph Wambaugh’s early book “The New Centurions” which painted a very stark portrait of the Los Angeles Police Academy of the 1960’s very much like what I had encountered in Officer Candidate School, where the slightest mistake or rule infraction could mean failure and dismissal. The training sergeant from the Sheriff’s Office had told me the regional academy I was to attend was pretty laid back compared to what I’d encountered in the Army. However, having been erroneously lulled by such descriptions before, I was going to hope he was right but prepare for the worst case scenario.

Read part 2 on Thursday, April 2nd

Tags Civil Rights, law enforcement, Los Angeles Police Academy, Officer Candidate School, police academy, police officers, radical terrorists, Sheriff's Office, The New Centurions, training, US Army, Viet Nam, Zed McGlunk

Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings: Driving, part 1 of probably 3

Post author By Thonie Hevron
Post date August 3, 2014
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Hal’s post for today is also on my updated website thoniehevron.com under “Just the Facts, Ma’am.” For now the photos aren’t posted but will be soon. Please bear with me during this transition to my website from Wordpress blog.

Thanks, Thonie

by Hal Collier

Think back to your youth. To some of us that will be a longer reach. Your hormones are racing and you wonder how your parents have survived knowing so little about the real world. You’re about to learn how to drive. You’re good at home for at least a few weeks before you ask mom if your can get a learner’s permit from DMV.

You get a permit and pester mom or dad to teach you to drive. It’s amazing how old dad got in six months while you drove in parking lots with no cars and on back streets. You finally get a license to drive. Mom will never sleep well again and dad seems to drink a little more beer at night after a lesson.

Flash forward to the day you graduate from the police academy and hit the streets. You’re a rookie and although you have passed an academy approved driving course, in the real world of police work you don’t know how to drive. If you get to drive a real black and white police car (B/W) it’s only to gas it up or have the garage wash your cruiser.

I’ll never forget my first time! I’m still in the academy, but in the fourth month, they sent you out into the field for a few days to get a taste of real police work. That means you actually put bullets in your gun and most citizens don’t know that you’re a rookie.

On my first day, I show up at Rampart station looking good. I’m assigned to ride along with a Senior Lead Officer (Community Relations Officer). He’s what I later referred to as a slug. We spend the first two hours running off fliers for a neighborhood watch meeting. I got a paper cut but decided not to tell my academy classmates I was injured on duty.

We spent another hours following catering trucks to high-rise buildings on Wilshire Boulevard. That was so he could hit on office secretaries. We ate lunch at a dive restaurant only because the meal was half price.

An LAPD no no!

After lunch, we’re driving down Wilshire Boulevard and my partner pulls over to the curb. He looks at me and says, “Get Out.” Oh crap, what have I done? He tells me I’m driving. Holy crap. I remind him I’m still in the academy; he laughs and tells me to drive. Cool. I get in and adjust the mirrors, seat, and cinch the seat belt down tight. I’m ready. I ask, “Where do you want me to drive?” He replies anywhere as long as it’s up and down Wilshire Boulevard real slow so I can look at the girls! I swore that I would never be that kind of a cop. He was later fired for using crime statistics to promote his own alarm business.

There are reasons that new officers don’t get to drive and I’m going to tell you some of them. The most important is survival! Every cop wants to go home at the end of his shift. The driver of a B/W often holds the life of both officers in his hands. An inexperienced driver can get both officers killed as well as innocent citizens. Trust me, there’s no glory in dying in a car crash that was your fault.

Cops, especially young cops seem to have an invincible attitude or “that’s not going to happen to me.” You have to attend a few police officer funerals to see that you’re not Superman. There is no bigger shock than looking down at a dead police officer in his uniform in a casket. I made my probationers go to at least one cop funeral for that reason alone. Cops have a tendency to want to be the first on scene at a major incident so we drive faster and take more chances. Only with experience do we slow down. Having a family also helps.

After graduation, I’m sent to Hollywood Division, the “Entertainment Capital of the World.” I’m pretty proud: we’re driving down Hollywood Boulevard, it’s a Saturday night and the streets are packed. I even have bullets in my gun. I’m perfectly happy to be the passenger—for a while.

Next I’ll describe why rookies shouldn’t drive until they have out grown those academy t-shirts.

–Hal

Tags black and white, Hollywood Boulevard, LAPD, police, police academy, Wilshire

Ramblings by Hal

Cop Funerals, Part Two

By Hal Collier

This Ramblings took me a long time to write and it’s Part 2.

I try to keep most of my Ramblings fun and on a positive note but the fact is that there are a lot of negative aspects of police work. If you work for over three decades in a dangerous job, there’s going to be some tragedy.

I saw a lot of partners seriously injured and pensioned off. Some couldn’t even work other jobs. Think of being sentenced to watching soap operas, or Oprah every day. It’s just like being retired but without good health. Believe it or not some of them were the lucky ones.

I attended more police funerals then any cop should have. In the Police Academy they had a class on officer survival taught by Bob Smitson. It was very graphic with pictures of dead cops on a morgue table. The class taught that you had to survive any confrontation. After the class, I walked to my car with my hand on my gun—and I was at the Police Academy. A month later, I was sent into the streets of Los Angles praying that I’d never be in the pictures shown in that class.

I wasn’t even off probation when I attended my first police officer funeral. My training officer told me that I had to attend; it was my duty. I was a training officer for twenty years and made my probationers attend at least one police officer funeral. It’s something that you will never forget. You see an American Flag-draped coffin, knowing that it contains a police officer who last week was doing the same job you did last night. If it’s an open casket, seeing a cop lying there in uniform is a sight you’ll never forget. You see the grieving wife, kids and family. It’s a real wake up call. You suddenly realize that you’re not invincible.

I couldn’t tell you how many cop funerals I attended, but it was more than I should have. For a while I attended every LAPD officer’s funeral, and a few LA County Sheriffs. There were also a few smaller city officer’s funerals. It was the least you can do for officers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice.

The news media will make an appearance and show a thirty second clip of the funeral on the 5 o’clock news. They will then show two minutes on a drug rehab for out-of-work actors.

A police officer’s funeral is a fitting tribute. I have seen officers attend from all over the country. All wearing their best dress uniforms, their leather gear shined to a high gloss.

All had that black elastic band across their badges. Some come thousands of miles to honor a fallen comrade. I have been at funerals where the procession of police cars stretched for miles, sometimes lined with citizens who appreciate the sacrifices we make.

The first funerals I attended just had the service and the 21 gun salute at the cemetery. My partner, Jim Tomer, collected a shell casing from each funeral we attended. Later funerals had a helicopter flyover with the missing man formation.

The LAPD Mounted Unit has a riderless horse with the boots reversed in the stirrups. Then there’s those bag pipes. Those damn bag pipes!!! I can usually control my emotions at funerals until those bag pipes play Amazing Grace. I have learned to bring enough Kleenex for both my partner and I.

Most of the funerals I attended, I didn’t personally know the officer. They were easier, if there is such a thing. You still see the grieving family and know that their Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries will never be the same.

Hal

Tags bag pipes, cop funerals, LA County Sheriffs, LAPD, missing man formation, morgue, police academy, probation, training, ultimate sacrifice

Ramblings by Hal

Ramblings: Fighting in Uniform: The Worst and the Longest

Post author By Thonie Hevron
Post date July 14, 2013
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This will be the last Ramblings on fighting in uniform. As I said before I didn’t fight a lot but sometimes I just couldn’t talk my way out of wrestling match.

I worked a few plain clothes assignments but never vice. Vice officers are always fighting. They get a violation and the criminal either decides he’s not going to jail on a morals charge, or he claims that he didn’t know it was a cop. Suspects always use the defense they didn’t know it was a cop when arrested by a plain clothes officer.

Ironic that all the times I was dressed for a fight, you know jeans, tennis shoes and an old shirt, I never had to fight.

Not all my fights were with men as you might expect. I was brought up to never hit a girl but once as a child I learned a valuable lesson. My sister had been picking on me and hit me. I hauled off and hit her back. She never hit me again. Hum.

It’s December 24 at about 3 A.M. My partner a female and I get a domestic family dispute call. We arrive and expect it to be a husband/wife dispute. No, it’s brother against brother and both have been drinking. Brother “A” punches brother “B” in the nose, breaking it. Brother “B” demands a citizen arrest of brother “A”. Both brothers are in their 30’s and by law we are required to accept the arrest.

Brother “A” gets handcuffed and placed in the back seat of our police car. I’m about to drive off when the boys’ mother, also drunk, races out of the house and screams, “You’re not taking my son to jail on Christmas Eve!” She reaches in my open window and grabs me around the neck. I swing open the car door and knock mom to the ground.

As I step out of the car, Mom attacks me. Mom is about 5′ 3″ and 100 lbs. soaking wet. I declined using the department approved choke hold and go for a rear wrist lock. I’m thinking it will be more humane for a little old lady. I hear a familiar snap sound—shit, I broke her arm. Mom and the son both went to jail on Christmas Eve. Mom first stopped off at an emergency room to have her arm set.

Police grab a union worker as others protest during a tense moment as union workers block a grain train in Longview, Wash., Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011. Longshoremen blocked the train as part of an escalating dispute about labor at the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview.(AP Photo/Don Ryan) — Police grab a union worker as others protest during a tense moment as union workers block a grain train in Longview, Wash., Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011. Longshoremen blocked the train as part of an escalating dispute about labor at the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview.
(AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Another time I’m walking a Morning Watch foot beat. We are walking thru an alley just south of Hollywood Boulevard at Highland. We see two guys and a girl standing next to a parked car. They are acting suspicious and we approach in the dark. When we get up on the car we see a second girl crouched down. I walk up on the girl, she screams, jumps up and grabs my badge.

Cops are very protective of two things. Their gun (which if taken away from them will get them killed) and their badge. The badge is earned and carried with a cop at all times. An officer keeps the same badge throughout their careers unless they promote. Most cops shine it every day before pinning it on their uniform and if shined enough the windows of City Hall were rubbed smooth. My badge said “Policeman”. Later, when females were hired for patrol, the badges said “Police Officer.” I use to say that I spent more time sleeping with my badge than I did with my wife.

Anyway this young girl grabs my badge and is attempting to rip it from my uniform shirt. Without even thinking, I grab the girl by the neck and lifted her with one hand and threw her on the hood of the car. The girl had been to a club drinking and when they got to their car, she decided she had to pee. She squatted down when we walked up on her. She was embarrassed being caught and even more embarrassed when she went to jail. Yea, she made a complaint against me.

This last story involved the longest fight I was ever in. The Hollywood Palladium in the 70’s was notorious for booking rock groups. With rock groups, comes drug abuse. I’m working with Officer Bob and we get a call of a 415 Man (disturbing the peace) a block from the Palladium. The citizen says this guy was running around in his yard acting crazy and jumped over his fence. He went east. We tell the citizen the standard Adam 12 line, “We’ll check it out.” We get back in our car and drive east. We only travel a few houses when another resident runs out and asks us if were looking for the drunk nut. The resident says he sitting in his driveway. Oh crap, we’ll have to take the drunk downtown to book and it will take us a couple of hours.

We walk up the driveway and see our suspect sitting in some tall grass. He’s looks stoned and I can’t see his hands due to the grass. I walk behind him and grab his hands. As he stands up he digs his heels in the ground and throws me back against a block wall. I apply a department approved choke hold as taught to me by Bob Jarvis at the Police Academy.

This suspect is only about 5′ 6″ and a 130 lbs. I’m 6′ and 160 lbs. of a fighting machine. My partner, Bob is a weight lifter and very strong. Somehow my choke hold slips and this little guy refuses to pass out. I’m trying to reapply the choke hold and Bob is whacking the suspect across the shins with his baton. Both of these tactics just anger our suspect. I vividly remember Bob throwing his baton away and ripping his clip on tie from his shirt and jumping in to control this drug crazed lunatic.

We can each control an arm, but when we try to pull his arms behind him, so we can handcuff him, he gets a burst of strength. We’re rolling around on the ground for a good ten minutes. With our body weight we can keep him pinned to the dirt. We count, 1, 2, 3, and swing his arms behind his back. After 5 minutes we get one hand cuffed. 1,2,3, pull his arms back, this time we were inches from cuffing him. This goes on for another 10 minutes, 1,2,3, ah shit we almost had it that time. After a long time we get this little guy cuffed. The resident watched from his kitchen window and couldn’t believe the strength of the little guy. We would need him as a witness later when our suspect made a complaint against us for excessive force.

We booked our suspect at Hollywood Jail and the next day he couldn’t walk to the Sheriffs bus due to the whacks across the shins. We had a couple of interviews with Internal Affairs and were cleared of the charges. Our suspect was loaded on PCP.

There’s a funny ending to this story. Six months later, I get a radio call to an apartment regarding a loud party. We knock on the door and the owner gets right in my face about what a brutal cop I am. That’s right it was the little guy I ruined a uniform fighting with. I run him for warrants and sure enough, he didn’t show up for court on a traffic ticket. I can’t arrest him in his residence at that late hour due to a law. I advise him to take care of his warrant and he tells me to do something anatomically impossible and said something about my mother.

The law restricted his arrest in his apartment until 6:00 A.M. At 6:01 A.M. that same morning, I knocked on his door and asked him if he had taken care of that warrant. He said he hadn’t. Guess what, he went to jail again. Don’t talk about a cop’s mother.

As I said before I didn’t like fighting, even when you win, you lose. Torn uniforms, Citizen Complaints, but thank goodness your skin grows back.

Hal

Tags Bob Jarvis, choke hold, cops, fighting, Palladium, police academy, uniform

Writer's Notes

Police Academy Diaries

POLICE ACADEMY DIARIES:

Final exams ended, 6 cadets will graduate on Saturday

Posted on 25 July 2012 by Pahrump Valley (Nevada) Times

By Kelsey Givens

“Sir, stop, stop right there!”

“Stop, come out and put your hands where I can see them!”

“Bang, bang, bang!”

No, those weren’t the sounds of a potentially dangerous standoff between police and an unknown suspect, but rather the loud commands from a role playing exercise during the Nye County Sheriff’s academy practical exams Thursday night.

Six cadets have officially entered the practical exam portion of their education; one of the last road blocks between them and the graduation scheduled for this weekend.

It’s a time where the cadets must show instructors what they’ve learned, and prove they understand how to handle situations they will face as full-fledged officers in the field.

Over the last two weeks, cadets have been thrown a variety of different scenarios they must respond to and decide, based on their training up to this point, how best to handle.

From traffic stops to landlord tenant issues to domestic batteries and burglaries in progress, the cadets have been moving through these fictional situations, demonstrating the skills they’ve learned over the last 27 weeks of the academy.

The exams, so far, have been conducted in relatively remote locations with few other people around, so as not to scare the public, academy instructor Deputy Brian Jonas said.

Horace Langford Jr./PVT - NCSO Cadets Elia Johnson and Kaitlyn Ferrell giving commands to suspect (NCSO Cadet Jeremy Bunker). — NCSO Cadets Elia Johnson and Kaitlyn Ferrell giving commands to suspect (NCSO Cadet Jeremy Bunker). photo by Horace Langford Jr./PVT

“We pick locations that don’t have a lot of public, because we don’t want people freaking out,” he explained. “It’s for our safety and the public’s safety; they don’t need to worry about that kind of stuff.”

The exams began with what Jonas called “unknown risk traffic stops,” or what some may refer to as a routine traffic stop.

During the first few days of practicals, cadets were making their way around town, pulling over designated role players, practicing how to conduct a traffic stop and how to interact with dispatch when checking a driver’s license and license plate numbers.

“We did that a little bit of what we call an unknown risk traffic stop that a lot of people like to say is a routine traffic stop, which we don’t say they are because they’re an unknown risk to us,” Jonas said at the end of the first week of exams. “And they’ve been doing those on role players, not the general public, for the last day or two.”

And to keep cadets thinking on their feet during the stops, Jonas said they added surprises to the scenarios like having weapons in the cars, having someone get out of their vehicle and try to run, or having the role player actually take off on the responding cadet.

Mixed in with the unknown risk stops, were more high risk felony stops, which required cadets to assist one another and provide backup, as officers never answer these types of stops or calls alone.

“We never do any type of stop with anyone that is potentially armed and dangerous or a felon suspect with just one deputy,” Jonas said.

So cadets practiced teaming up and working together to pull over a designated vehicle, before ordering the “felons” out and to the ground where they could be detained.

During the following week, the class moved on to responding to other sorts of calls, like a man with an axe in the middle of the road and a burglary in process at an impound lot

Sometimes during these scenarios, cadets were called out to respond and would have to decide whether or not to request backup and sometimes backup was assigned before they even arrived “on scene.”

During the burglary in progress situation, cadets were working through Thursday night, the trainees were called out to the NCSO impound lot, where the alleged burglary was taking place.

When the cadets pulled up to the lot, the gates sat slightly ajar and several role players dressed in all black awaited the cadets’ arrival inside the fenced yard.

NCSO cadet Kaitlyn Ferrell chasing a suspect at the impound lot during training exercise Thursday evening.photo by Horace Langford Jr./PVT - — NCSO cadet Kaitlyn Ferrell chasing a suspect at the impound lot during training exercise Thursday evening.
Photo by Horace Langford Jr./PVT –

As the cadets pulled up to the lot in marked patrol cars, one “suspect” would dash out and take off, while the other remained inside, waiting to react to the cadets’ commands or to expose their mistakes.

During one round of the exercise, a cadet forgot to lock his car door, and one of the role players stole it.

And in another instance, a role player grabbed an air soft gun they were using in the scenarios and shot one of the cadets; showing him he wasn’t keeping watch of the area well enough, something that in real life would be extremely dangerous.

Though they made mistakes, role players and instructors were quick to point out what they did right when they met once the drill was over.

“They get critiqued right afterward by the evaluators and the role players,” Jonas said. “And then the evaluators and role players will report to me, and we’ll go back over the scenario with them and make sure they understood what they did wrong.”

During these critiques, evaluators would point out exactly where cadets failed, and explain or show them how they would have done it better.

Once the cadets had been shown what they needed to work on, if they failed the scenario, they would be sent back through a modified version of the exam again.

“If somebody does fail, they do remediate,” Jonas said. “We’ll slightly modify the scenario, so it’s not the same thing, or obviously they’ll get it, and they redo the scenario.”

If a cadet were to fail the scenario again, they would go through a much more intense remediation, as well as counseling, until either they got it, or it became clear that person wasn’t cut out to be an officer.

“If they continue to where an individual, at any part of the academy, whether it’s practicals, or academics, or any portion of the academy, they get to the point they’re not responding to our training, that’s when we determine this person’s not cut out to be in law enforcement,” Jonas said.

“At any point, whether it’s in the academy, the field training program, or whatever, if they’re having deficiencies we sit down and explain it and retrain them, whether it’s scenarios, or we concentrate on traffic stops or their verbal skills to talk to people.

“And then, if we see continued progress in a positive direction, then we keep going, but if we don’t see a response in a positive manner to our training, that individual is then not cut out for law enforcement,” he said.

So far, though, Jonas said the cadets have been doing well, other than a few nerves in the beginning.

NCSO Cadet Jeremy Bunker maintaing vigil over the impound lot after his partner contains suspect. photo by Horace Langford Jr./PVT — NCSO Cadet Jeremy Bunker maintaing vigil over the impound lot after his partner contains suspect. Photo by Horace Langford Jr./PVT

“We haven’t had any major hurdle issues or anything, probably just a lot of nerves and anticipation from them in the beginning,” he said. “They know they’re being evaluated by the people who will be evaluating them in the streets.”

Over the last two weeks, cadets had to successfully log 36 hours working through scenarios, in order to finish the practical exam portion of their education.

With that behind them, the cadets can now look forward to the culmination of all their hard work over the last 27 weeks — graduation.

Of the six who have made it through the academy thus far, five, Mike Connelly, Katlyn Ferrel, Alvin Hill, Chris Hopson and Elia Johnson, who were all hired using a law enforcement grant, will go on to become full-fledged patrol officers for NCSO. The sixth, Jeremy Bunker, who put himself through the academy, plans to move on to work for parole and probation in Las Vegas.

The graduation ceremony is scheduled for 4 p.m. Saturday at the Bob Ruud Community Center.

From here, the cadets will move onto the 22-week field training program, where they will continue their training and education.

Editor’s note: This is one in an occasional series about the Nye County Sheriff’s Office 27-week police academy. Though graduation is near, the series will continue when the freshly-minted police officers begin their field training. Look for those stories in future issues of the PVT.

Horace Langford Jr. / Pahrump Valley Times – – Nye County Sheriff’s academy cadets Elia Johnson and Katlyn Ferrel order cadet Chris Hopson to the ground during a felony traffic stop scenario as part of the academy’s practical exams.

Horace Langford Jr. / Pahrump Valley Times – NCSO Cadet Jeremy Bunker maintains vigil over the impound lot after his partner contains a fleeing suspect. The exercise was part of practical exams that test cadets on a variety of risky situations.

Tags cadets, felony vehicle stops, NCSO, Nye County Sheriff, police academy