Sunday, December 09, 2007
A police academy for everyone
Christian Trejbal
Recent columns
- Montgomery schools' $6.2 million deficit
- This column does not compute
- Make political parties pay for their primaries
- Tough times ahead for schools
From the RoundTable blog
The Blacksburg Police Department has been tragically busy for the last year and a half. Terrible events repeatedly struck as if rising from some hellish mouth in the Earth beneath the old middle school.
Police officers certainly earned a respite, but they didn't take a break. As the summer wound down, they opened the department's doors to 19 nosey citizens, including one particularly nosey editorial writer. The 16th Blacksburg Citizens Police Academy went off without a hitch.
The academy is effective outreach. Officer Johnnie Self, who organizes the academy, ensures students receive an in-depth look at the work police do to enforce the law and keep the community safe.
An undercover drug investigator visited the class. Anyone who saw him on the street and didn't know better would let his eyes slide on past.
The Emergency Response Team brought all of its tools for show-and-tell. Its members revealed the weapons and armor they deploy in high-risk scenarios and talked candidly about some of its recent work.
We visited the town's shooting range, tucked behind a town ball field, and tried all of the department's firearms from pistols to assault rifles. One of my classmates took the obliterated paper torso to hang in her office.
We rode out onto the highway and shot radar, learning the intricacies and science of that devilish law enforcement tool.
And the forensics expert demonstrated how he fights criminals with science and dispelled any illusions we might have had that television crime shows reflect the real world.
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Academy graduates gain knowledge and insight few citizens share, which is why the department puts it on twice each year. Chief Kim Crannis doesn't let her officers participate just to inform 19 people. She wants to create ambassadors.
Residents need to know that all of the police live outside Blacksburg because the cost of living is so high. Their station is old and cramped. There's a staffing pinch. Radio batteries die too quickly.
And most important, there is usually a reason police do something a certain way, even if it isn't obvious.
So to become more knowledgeable citizens, the 19 of us attended 10 Thursday night classes and spent time riding with police on duty.
I rode twice.
The first was a Saturday midnight shift. From an excitement perspective, it was a bust. No downtown riots occurred.
We responded to noise complaints mostly. We helped shut down a student party where more than 100 students filed out of an apartment like clowns from a tiny car. And we aided a young man whose had a golf club-induced gash in his head.
The other ride-along was even more dull, but that was the plan. I rode on a Sunday morning to see the morning-after cleanup. Theft and vandalism was the order of the day.
Two lessons stood out.
I learned that police are people.
Too often citizens see the uniform but not the man or woman wearing it. It's understandable. We encounter police at the worst possible times, when something bad has happened. We want someone to make it better or we don't want to get in trouble.
Yet strip away the uniform and the badge, and you find someone no different from the rest of us. They have their own hopes and dreams, passions, families, pets, worries and all the other things that round out a life.
That bicycle patrol officer you might have seen cruising around town and handing out speeding tickets to cars, he's a Cleveland Indians fan. Officer David Cole, better known as "Chico," wore a Tribe hat to the shooting range, which made him aces in my book. We exulted and ultimately mourned the team's playoff run.
One officer told me about his brother-in-law who had been causing no end of trouble for his family. Another talked about how he liked to hunt. And another chatted about his ex-wife.
The staff at local taverns greets them warmly when they stop by on patrol. They know each other's names and chat about the mundane events of the day as much as any problems.
Each cop is a unique person, not just a cog in some monolithic law enforcement apparatus.
The second thing I learned was far less profound.
The pepper bombs they use to get troublemakers' eyes burning don't really work on me. The emergency response team hit us with one so we'd know what it was like. If I ever barricade myself in The Roanoke Times building, that kind of information could come in handy.
My thanks to Chief Crannis, Officer Self and all the other members of the department for the experience.
Anyone interested in applying for the spring academy or arranging a ride-along should contact the department. They'll be glad to hear from you.
Trejbal is an editorial writer for The Roanoke Times based in the New River Valley bureau in Christiansburg.
