A little pain, a little gain

Yesterday  in the late afternoon  Matt Winckler

3.5 down, 15 to go.

Last Friday in PT/DT we were introduced to cursory searches–the kind where the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the suspect may be armed with a weapon of some sort, which provides justification for a quick search to make sure he doesn’t. Thus began the “get close and personal” portion of police training, since bad guys don’t have any consideration for privacy or decency in general (unlike us, even in searches), especially when it comes to hiding contraband.

On Monday after PT and at the beginning of DT, we did a quick refresher of the cursory search technique, still just wearing our PT shorts and T-shirt–no pockets. No weapons were found, since nobody had anything on them. Or so we thought. It turned out the instructors had given about 5 or 6 officers dummy weapons to hide on their persons, and not one of them was found. Some were tucked in shorts waistbands, others inside socks, and one (carried by one of the three female officers) was tucked inside the right side of her sports bra under her arm. (Happily for me, the suspect I was searching didn’t have anything on him.) However, for this failure to take searching seriously enough, the instructors felt it necessary to give us a memorable token to ensure that we never missed a weapon again, and we proceeded to do about 50 flutter kicks in 3 sets, always keeping legs off the ground, and spending 30-45 seconds between each set keeping legs elevated. I didn’t like flutter kicks when they came in packs of 15, but by the end of that my legs were cramping up and I was about ready to roll over and die. Needless to say, everyone got a degree more aggressive in their cursory searches. We spent the rest of the class in various civilian attire finding hidden weapons.

On Tuesday we had four hours of Firearms training, and although we have not yet sent any hot lead downrange, it was still fun getting outside and doing drawing/reloading/challenge exercises. It was great getting out of the classroom for a while.

In Criminal Law we’ve been learning about robbery, arson, malicious mischief, and now sex offenses. We’ve also started up our 40-hour block of Criminal Procedures, which will be teaching us all sorts of things about what we can and cannot do on the job. We’re also in the midst of Collision Investigation, wherein today we witnessed a truly horrible video depicting a moped getting run over by a semi truck. Hopefully the driver was dead after the first or second set of wheels ran over him. The body got caught up in the rear truck wheels which, locked from the sudden braking, smeared the remains across the roadway as the truck screeched to a halt, leaving a big red streak and body parts all over the roadway. Pretty sick. I’m hoping the shovel-and-broom job belongs to the firefighters–the Real Heroes. (*golf clap*)

Today in PT/DT we learned about prone cuffing, which involves getting a suspect face-down on the ground and controlling him by placing your shin/knee across his neck/head/shoulder area, and placing about 70-80% of your weight on it. I had the honor of being chosen as the instructor’s “bad guy” to demonstrate this technique, and frankly I thought he was going to crush my neck and/or jaw and/or skull. He must weigh 230-250 pounds, which means that probably around 180-190 pounds were sitting on my neck and head. In case you need to be told, this is a less than pleasurable experience, and I don’t suggest ever giving a police officer reason to have you go to the prone cuffing position. The instructor took his jolly time slowly walking through the process and explaining each step to the officers, and by the time he got to the point of giving me further orders to place my free hand behind my back, I had almost passed out. I learned afterward that he gave me the order three times; I only heard the third one. Having someone kneel on your head is exactly no fun at all, but it’s part of the job, for now. I’m still trying to decide whether it’s better getting paid to have your head knelt upon for a few minutes or whether it’s better getting paid to write Visual Basic code all day. At the moment I continue to lean toward the former.

Tomorrow we’re slated to actually head to the range for more Firearms and to shoot a few rounds–probably a very few, but again, any time out of the classroom feels good at this point.

Quote of the Day

Monday  around evening time  Matt Winckler

“I don’t sell crack; I’m a prostitute!”

– A prostitute

This was brought to my attention in Criminal Procedures today and is originally from this Cops video (which, be forewarned, also has a segment showing a [not too graphic] pedestrian-vehicle collision).

Boredom and random traffic law

Thursday  around evening time  Matt Winckler

Just FYI, today was about the most boring day of instruction yet here at police academy. Four hours of EVOC and four hours of Firearms training turned out to be significantly less interesting than advertised. It seems that first we must slog through a ream of “driving for idiots” and firearms safety coursework in the classroom before ever getting outside to do something interesting. The latter case I’m okay with (”You! You there with the penchant for fooling with your mock firearm! Are you paying attention?”), but this morning’s EVOC material consisted largely of the stuff that virtually everyone should have picked up in driver’s ed class when they were 15. At least the instructors admitted that they knew it was extremely dry and that they were just obligated by the state to go through it. They promised that the actual driving course (in three weeks) will be the most entertaining thing we do at the academy. We get two days of daylight driving and one night of driving in darkness, including at least two pursuit actions.

Oh, and as I considered it today, it was probably too strong to refer to some of my classmates as “jackasses”. Kindly amend that to “juveniles”, as I have not yet seen them do anything truly attaining to the level of jackassery, like stapling obscene photographs to their foreheads. I’m working to improve the accuracy of my categorizations. And in the further interests of accuracy, the vast majority of the class is on the ball and squared away. Just not my section of the room.

On a random note, I learned a surprising thing about traffic signals at intersections. You know the folks you see burning through an intersection just as the light turns red? Turns out that it is entirely legal to “run the red light” if, at the time the light turns red, the front of your vehicle is crossing into the “intersection control zone” (in the city, typically marked by the stop line or crosswalk border). For a representation, here is some ASCII.

          |   '   |
          |   '   |
          |   '   |
          +-------+
          |||||||||
          +-------+
_________/    RED  \__________
      |-|GRN        |-|B#
- - - |-|           |-| - - -
______|-|           |-|_______
         \         /
          +-------+
          |||||||||
          +-----A-+
          |   ' # |
          |   '   |
          |   '   |

Suppose that this skillfully-drawn illustration represents the intersection at the exact instant the light turned from yellow to red. Vehicle A is traveling northbound into the intersection and its front bumper has just crossed the line into the crosswalk. It is technically legal for car A to proceed all the way through the intersection despite the light being red. Amazing!

Further suppose that Vehicle B isn’t paying attention, sees the green light, proceeds into the intersection, and collides with Vehicle A on its way through. Whose fault is it? Vehicle B, for failure to yield the right of way. Astounding! (If you don’t believe me, see RCW 46.04.240 and RCW 46.61.055(3)(a).)

I’m full of fascinating traffic law tidbits this week, so here’s another one. You know how sometimes a vehicle will be turning left on a two-lane road and will hold up traffic, and then inevitably some jerks who are too impatient to wait for the left turn will swerve around to pass the turning vehicle on the right? Well, I always thought they were impatient jerks, but it turns out the law is on their side, at least some of the time. It’s legal to pass a vehicle making such a left turn “under conditions permitting such movement in safety. Such movement shall not be made by driving off the roadway.” (RCW 46.61.115(1)(a) and (2).)

One thing I’m appreciating already from my time here is my increased ability to navigate and understand the RCW, even though it remains feeble and needs much more exercise. There are some pretty interesting laws on the books. One of my favorites so far is RCW 46.61.665. (And it’s also “prima facie evidence of reckless driving“, a gross misdemeanor!)

Novelty gone

20 Aug 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

What novelty there ever was about being at police academy has fairly worn off by now. Day in, day out, most things have fallen into a routine, and unfortunately it’s not all exciting and glamorous. Monday, for instance, we were treated to our first major test (which I scored 94% on, but the class average was 90%), followed by two hours of traffic law and two hours of report writing. Tuesday was four hours of criminal law, two hours of communications skills, and two hours of hate crimes. I can’t believe today is only Wednesday, but there were two hours of PT/DT, two hours of criminal law, two hours of traffic law, and two very exciting hours of collision investigation. I learned all about marks on the roadway and saw a picture of a pickup rolled onto its side, driver partially ejected and with his head smashed underneath the frame of the truck. The picture was taken from the passenger window (looking down). You could only tell it was his head because (apart from being attached to the limp body) the jaw was in the driver’s window, whereas the forehead was outside above the cabin roof. Pretty wild. Wear your seat belt.

Today in PT we went off-road and ran trails through some woods. It was an interesting change from running on asphalt through residential streets, but I don’t think we ran as far–it was pretty easy, at least for me. I am rather surprised to find that I’m in the upper echelon of the class as far as physical fitness is concerned, particularly running. (I came in fourth out of 30 in running during the PT test last week–though, as I said, the effort made me feel like vomiting all morning long.) So it’s sometimes a bit disappointing to end the running while I still feel like I could go a good bit farther. Today, happily, we also had no crunches or flutter kicks or anything of the sort. I thought about doing some this evening in the apartment just for nostalgia’s sake. Thought about it. Given that PT on Monday and today were much easier than last Friday, I’m getting ominous feelings about this Friday. In Defensive Tactics we learned how to handcuff a compliant suspect in various positions. I understand that on Monday we’ll start “customary searches” for detecting weapons concealed on a suspect. Ought to be good and awkward.

Week three is halfway done, but the days are still just crawling by. It pretty much stinks being away from your family all week long.

Tomorrow promises to hold a little more interest than the week thus far, as we’ll be doing the classroom portions of EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operations Course) and firearms–four hours apiece.

The disciplinarian crackdown really hasn’t materialized. We’ve had a grand total of one uniform inspection to date, and no discipline came out of it, despite the fact that as a class we were a fairly sorry bunch of slobs. Likewise, classroom protocol is a good deal looser than I expected, or perhaps even prefer. They (in general) say that all teams go through four stages: “forming, storming, norming, and performing”. The initial stage is copacetic in a shallow sense while you get to know everybody, and then everybody starts getting on each other’s nerves, after which (if the team survives) everyone gets over it and “normalizes”, following which true good performance can be achieved. Maybe it’s just the “storming” phase (I don’t think so), but the officers in my general area of the classroom seem to be working at getting on my nerves lately. Classroom seating was assigned alphabetically by last name in columns (front to back), and it seems to be just my luck that my name placed me in the general quarter of the classroom largely populated by jackasses. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, but I think the general principle holds. I will be nervous for the general populace (not in Kennewick, of course) if some of these people graduate, unless they undergo some significant personality changes between now and December 11. One fellow, for instance, has the rather disturbing habit of toying with his holster. He’ll release the gun retention strap (*click!*), half-draw his mock firearm (”to be treated as a real firearm in all respects”), then re-holster it (*click!*) and snap the retention strap into place (*click!*). During class. Repeatedly. Frequently. And sometimes accompanied by making a sudden movement in his chair to spin to one side and glare across the room. It’s rather disconcerting. (I keep wondering whether he’ll do that with his real gun.) Or there are the other fellows in the vicinity who feel compelled to toy with the gear on their duty belt and snap/unsnap pouches. Or tap their fingernails loudly on the table. Is it so hard to just sit still and listen? Apparently it is. This is what I get for having a last name starting with “W”–I’m assigned to the far corner of the back row, which seems to breed delinquency.

By the way, here’s where the fun takes place, and here’s where we actually live.

Two more days and I’ll be done with another week, but in order to get through one of those two days I’d better go to bed right now.

2 down, 16.5 to go

16 Aug 2008  in the early evening  Matt Winckler

Week two ended with the roughest PT/DT session yet. The running is still not bad–I think we went about 2.5-3 miles yesterday. But after the run we had the opportunity to begin using our rocks–the softball-sized ones they ordered us to select and paint last weekend. We did assorted upper-body exercises, walking lunges, and some exercise I can’t remember the name of (from standing position, drop to pushup position–a.k.a. the “forward-leaning rest” position–then draw legs in and jump up to standing position again). Then we left the asphalt and went into the gym, where the real torture could begin. That consisted primarily of abdominal exercises, from knee-to-elbow crunches to regular crunches to flutter kicks to a few other things I can’t recall, with pushups liberally sprinkled throughout. By the end of it I felt like somebody had shoved a knife into my right side, but I was still alive, which fact afforded me the opportunity to learn how to properly handcuff a compliant suspect. This would have been great fun, except that the instructors mandated that for the preservation of the gym floor mats, we must not drop any equipment–no dropping handcuffs or handcuff keys. I groaned inwardly, because I know that in a room with 30 people–15 of them handling equipment at any given time–this is a physical impossibility. Sure enough, over the course of the instruction we did another hundred or so punitive pushups due to people dropping their handcuff keys. At times the instructors would have “mercy”, saying: “Well, since we just did 20 pushups, this time we’ll only do 5.” And then the command would be given to go halfway down into a pushup, hold it there, slowly rotate the upper body around in a circle clockwise a few times, then counterclockwise, then back up. “One!” This grew very tiresome very quickly, even with variations thrown in–rocking forward/back/left/right, hands close together, hands far apart. I have a much greater appreciation for vanilla pushups now, even when there are four times as many.

After all this we had a class from the Department of Licensing, which turned out to be far more interesting than it sounds. I learned about the variety of security measures that are in place on our driver licenses, some of which I was explicitly told to keep secret and, being skeptical, was surprised to find do not seem to be generally known on the Internet. It was pretty fascinating learning about some of the hidden features and checksums in place that you can confirm at a glance if you know what to look for.

The last thing of the day was a class on public speaking, which was saved only by the charisma of its instructor. I must say that the instructors at the academy thus far have been almost unilaterally excellent. Very few that are dry or boring. (Liquor law, alas, was one such instance.) This helps quite a bit when it’s 1530 and you’re short on sleep after a morning of running around being subjected to physical torture.

They keep saying that the next 16 weeks are going to fly by even though it doesn’t seem like it right now, but I’ll sure say that it definitely doesn’t seem like it right now. I can scarcely believe that a little more than two weeks ago I was working at Battelle; it feels like an eternity. Every weekend I come home expecting there to be lots of news and changes, but in reality only five days have passed and not much happens. This is probably a function of the sheer number of classes and amount of information being shoved into my brain–it feels like much more time has passed. I’m still trying to get used to being addressed and introducing myself as “Officer Winckler”.

That’s about it for now. I got the pictures of the bomb-diffusing robot off of my phone, but the quality is so poor that I’m not even going to post them. I’ll have to find a better solution for taking photos in the future, particularly once we get into some of the more interesting stuff.

Recordings for Young Children

16 Aug 2008  in mid-afternoon  Matt Winckler

We’ve been teaching our children The Catechism for Young Children, which is based on the Westminster Shorter Catechism. We have had great success in recording a CD with this catechism and some other things on it and then playing it during the boys’ “quiet time” in the afternoon–they are very adept at picking it up and memorizing it. Today I had occasion to re-record the whole thing, along with several Bible passages and the Apostle’s Creed. Since others have asked us about it before, I’ve decided to simply post the recordings here for all. Feel free to download, modify, and use it in any way you see fit. Be forewarned that the recording is of a solidly amateur variety (built-in iMac microphone and my own hideous voice), but you get what you pay for, and it’s functional.

You will find that there are a few differences between these recordings and the text of the catechism I linked to above at reformed.org. Mystie went through and changed all the King James passages to the ESV translation, and she also added four extra questions after Q15 that are used by our church’s Sunday school program.

The two compressed archives (childrens_catechism.zip and bible_passages.zip) contain all the catechism recordings and the Bible passage recordings, respectively. All recordings are in MP3 format.

Catechism for Young Children

• All files (ZIP archive containing all questions below, 7.2MB)
• Q1-Q10 (338KB)
• Q11-Q15 (462KB)
• Q16-Q21 (277KB)
• Q22-Q30 (419KB)
• Q31-Q42 (600KB)
• Q43-Q51 (532KB)
• Q52-Q63 (650KB)
• Q64-Q75 (503KB)
• Q76-Q83 (594KB)
• Q84-Q94 (840KB)
• Q95-Q104 (618KB)
• Q105-Q121 (974KB)
• Q122-Q132 (558KB)
• Q133-Q145 (751KB)

Bible Passages

• All files (ZIP archive containing all passages below, 2.6MB)
• Psalm 8 (409KB)
• Psalm 19 (706KB)
• Matthew 6:5-13 (472KB)
• John 1:1-5, 9-14 (472KB)
• John 3:14-18 (284KB)
• Colossians 3:12-17 (409KB)
• 2 Timothy 3:14-17 (253KB)

Christian Creeds

• The Apostle’s Creed (331KB)

More classes, more pain

14 Aug 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

Police academy is like college, but with far less focus. In the first two weeks, I have had classes on eighteen distinct topics. Some will be ongoing courses throughout academy (e.g. Criminal Law, around 40 hours or so), and others are just a single independent 2-hour block. This would make it a little tricky to study for examinations if the “exam review session” wasn’t such a joke. Our first block test is on Monday. It consists of 100 multiple-choice questions, and this afternoon the TAC Officer reviewed the test. By “reviewed the test”, I mean that he went through the test booklet and informed us of the percentage of questions that each class contributes to the test, along with topics that “it would be good to be familiar with”. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a complete joke, but we’ll see. He did say that for all the sessions he’s been a TAC Officer (6), he’s never had an academic failure. I believe him.

Defensive Tactics continues to get serious. Yesterday we ran about 2 or 2.5 miles (still not enough to exhaust, at the pace they’re going), and then did a total of 70 pushups (plus 20 more punitive ones for someone not keeping their hands above the waist), 100 crunches, 50 Icantrememberwhattheyrecalleds–like a stomach crunch but instead raising knees up to touch elbows without moving your upper body, and 20 or so flutter kicks. This last pretty much murdered me, but at least I didn’t feel nauseous this time around. After that we moved on to interesting things and learned more “passive resistance contact techniques”. They involve twisting wrists and elbows in various and assorted painful manners, and can be used for things like convincing a drunk to stand up from a sitting position. I’m not sure how any of us will to escape this academy without serious wrist and arm injuries.

One more day and it’s weekend time again.

Quote of the day

14 Aug 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

“People are idiots. And I don’t mean that in a nice way.”

– An instructor

Ramping up

12 Aug 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

I brought up my computer to the apartment this past weekend and I have some Internet access, so posts may be somewhat more frequent now. On the other hand, given the amount of homework we’re doing, perhaps not.

This week, academy seems to be getting a little more serious. On Monday we had our first instance of punitive pushups: 20 for an officer not keeping his hands above the waist. This was a new mandate as of Monday; from now on we are not allowed to have our hands below the waist in order to form good habits for the “interview” position. The idea is that with your hands in front of you in the chest/abdominal area (with fingers not clasped!), you can more quickly reach your gun and you’re also in a much better defensive position if someone comes at you suddenly.

PT/DT was more brutal Monday, too. We performed the first of three physical tests that will be conducted during this academy–one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. It is very similar to the assessment test we took before coming up here, but consists of 1.5 miles as fast as you can run them, immediately followed by as many pushups as you can perform with no resting, immediately followed by as many situps as you can perform with no resting. (The previous PAT provided 5-10 minute breaks between each activity.) I burned myself out on the run, beating all my previous times by coming in at 9:37. Because of that I only managed 36 pushups, and by the end of my 54 situps I was ready to empty my stomach on the parking lot outside. Perhaps unfortunately, I kept my banana breakfast down, but I felt sick all morning long while practicing prisoner compliance techniques and more falling.

One of my disappointments, by the way, is that I will not be able to share all the juicy details of the ninja moves I’m learning as part of defensive tactics. Apparently we don’t want everyone to know how we’re trained, so that bad guys can’t counter-train. This is reasonable but nevertheless unfortunate, because some of the stuff we’re doing is pretty dang cool. (Or at least it is to someone who’s never had any martial arts training.)

Yesterday’s highlight was perhaps when one of my apartment roommates (I have three) found a black mouthguard lying in the middle of the road and, thinking it was his, picked it up and put it in his mouth. He quickly discovered that it was not in fact his, and later advertised a found mouthguard in the lunchroom. I’m not sure which is more disturbing, the fact that he inadvertently used someone else’s mouthguard or the fact that he was willing to put anything that he’d picked up off a public roadway into his mouth in the first place.

Yesterday evening from 1815 (when we get home after dinner) to 2300 was spent in solid homework and uniform preparation for an inspection this morning. This evening wasn’t quite as bad; I was done with immediate homework by about 2100 and so we practiced some DT in the apartment.

Today we had one so-so class, Traffic Law, one extremely boring class, Liquor Law, and one very interesting class, Bombs and Explosives. I was awestruck at how mind-bogglingly simple it is to construct improvised explosive devices–with parts that you could pick up at your local Wal-Mart, you could quickly construct an IED capable of blowing apart a minivan (the bomb squad expert had video to prove it, using some pipe bombs that he’d constructed). We then got to witness a blasting cap being detonated live using an HMX fuse, which was also fascinating. Contrary to most people’s conception of a fuse burning slowly along the ground (fireworks-style), the HMX ignition travels about 6,800 feet per second, or pretty much instantaneous for all everyday purposes. The fuse itself just looks like yellow plastic clothesline, and when it detonated the entire length of it went bright orange (as in fire), followed by a blasting cap on the end of the fuse blowing a coffee can apart. Good stuff.

After that we got to tour the bomb squad’s response vehicle, a truck that carries all their equipment and their robot. (Pictures of the robot are forthcoming, once I get home to where I can use the Mac’s Bluetooth to get them off my phone.) He said the truck itself cost about $300,000, not counting any of its contents. The robot was around $240,000.

As part of the class, before the practical demonstrations, we witnessed the photographic results of idiocy mixed with blasting caps. This included one bright individual who found a blasting cap (which look about like longish metal cigarettes, and are clearly marked “DANGEROUS - EXPLOSIVE”) with fuse protruding from the end and decided that it would be smart to stick the cap in his mouth and light the fuse as if it was a cigarette. He lived. The results, frankly, were horrific. The picture showed his face as pretty much a pulpy bloody mass with fleshy strips (one of which was what used to be his tongue) hanging down on his chest and dripping blood and gore. His eyes were visible above the carnage, but everything below his eyes was just plain obliterated. Pretty sick. The moral of the story is “don’t smoke blasting caps.”

Criminal Law continues to be my main enjoyment in the classroom. We’ve now covered the various degrees of assault and what elements must be proven in order to convict in each case. It is great fun discussing various provided scenarios with my roommates and deciding how we would charge each one. I probably could have been a lawyer, except then I wouldn’t get to carry a gun everywhere and drive fast with the lights and sirens going.

Tomorrow we’re slated for more DT, two more hours of Traffic Law, and an afternoon full of Collision Investigation. With nothing but water permitted in the classroom, I’m hoping the the Collision Investigation instructors are sufficiently interesting to keep me awake.

One down, 17.5 to go

09 Aug 2008  in the early morning  Matt Winckler

Week one of Basic Law Enforcement Academy (BLEA) is in the books. Here are some highlights.

Living conditions are excellent. They have put us into some ritzy apartments that are nicer than my house. The drawback is that they are a good 20 minutes away from the training center, which is evidently more than is typical. However, as I expected some sort of roach motel or barracks, I’ll take that tradeoff in a heartbeat.

The food is provided by a local small restaurant whose proprietor somehow knows how to cook food that doesn’t have that “restaurant” taste. It’s not the same as true home cooking, but it’s a lot better than typical restaurant cooking. No complaints.

My academy class (#635) consists of 30 people, 3 of which are Kennewick, a bunch of which are Spokane or Pullman, and the rest of which are from various agencies in central and eastern Washington. Almost all of them are married, and most of them have kids, which I think has increased the general level of maturity and kept general stupidity to a minimum (which is not to say that it is entirely absent).

The most surprising thing is that the academy has been far more lax than I ever expected. Literally no one has done any sort of punitive work yet at all–no pushups, no “student memorandums” (”I have learned that it is important to keep my boots highly shined because…”), nothing. One of the other Kennewick officers I’m there with was in the Coast Guard and indicates that this is typical; that the first week is more relaxed and casual and that the real fun will begin next week or the week after, particularly as people get comfortable and start making stupid mistakes. I can already see it happening; I have several people picked out mentally for the “first to be seriously punished” award. There are certainly things going on that, per academy rules and regs, could be disciplined for (talking to other students in class, playing around with your holster/mock firearm, which is to be treated as a real firearm at all times, sloppy drill/marching, etc.) To be honest, I’ll welcome some crackdown and discipline. This past week has been made a few degrees more surreal by the fact that instructors and the TAC Officer (the officer in charge of coordinating students/instructors/general academy stuff, but below the actual academy commander) have not been hostile or even intimidating. With perhaps the sole exception of the PT/DT instructors, they have all had an excellent sense of humor and are not hesitant whatsoever to share it with the students. This has been pretty bizarre and not at all what I expected.

Classes this week included:

• Harassment in the workplace: This was undoubtedly the most interesting sexual harassment class that I’ve ever been to. I think police officers inevitably have more interesting stories to tell than anyone else in the general public. One example: the instructor once was working on a squad focused on cleaning up prostitution in an area of town, and had a couple of female officers that would dress up as prostitutes to catch men who would try to solicit them. So one evening the instructor was walking through the station and ran into one of the female officers who appeared to be in her garb–tight short leather skirt, revealing top, etc. As he walked past, he commented: “Oh, are you running the hooker beat tonight?” Her response: “No, I’m just here to pick up my paycheck.” Ah. Er. He indicated that the only response (and his chosen response) was to just keep on walking. To us, he waved his hands and shrugged his shoulders: “What can I say? I thought she looked like a hooker!”
• Blood-borne Pathogens: Learning about the diseases you can contract from coming into contact with bodily fluids and what to do about it. Also included a segment on tuberculosis. I learned that even in the case of direct blood-to-blood contact with someone HIV positive, you only have something like a 0.04% chance of actually contracting the virus.
• Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement: Evidently this is a stressful job, and you need to be well-grounded to survive it.
• Criminal Law: This class is fantastic. I could have been a lawyer. I enjoy learning to read the RCW and understanding the meanings and definitions of crimes, as well as the nuances of language and the case law interpretations that have clarified various aspects of the law. I’ve already learned a lot, and I can tell this is going to be an excellent class. Time permitting, I’m thinking of starting a series of criminal law posts here to reiterate what I’m learning in the class, thus both teaching you and also reinforcing my own knowledge.
• Traffic Law: Somewhat less interesting, but no less important than criminal law. As the title suggests, this class covers the traffic violations I’ll be stopping people for. A fair amount of time was spent trying to figure out, from the RCW, whether or not it is legal for a golf cart to be driven on a public street. (This was a question raised by a student, and the instructor actually didn’t know the answer. The general consensus was to treat the golf cart as an off-road vehicle, meaning that it would be illegal to drive it on the street unless it was properly licensed. This has the flaw in the fact that you cannot license a golf cart–the DMV won’t issue it. No final answer has been reached.)
• Report Writing: One of the most important aspects of policing is report writing, because “if it’s not in the report, it didn’t happen.” This is not the most glamorous class of all, but it’s probably one of the most important. I also picked up another excellent quote from it concerning field interviews: “If they’re talking, you’re winning.” As long as people are talking, eventually some bits of the truth will slip out, or they’ll slip up and contradict themselves if they’re trying to lie to you.
• Physical Training/Defensive Tactics (DT): This didn’t happen until Friday, though from now on it will be conducted three days a week. It felt really good to get out and finally exercise as part of academy, though some folks are going to have a rough time. I am glad to say that the run we went on (said to be 2 miles, but I can scarcely believe it was that long) didn’t even wind me, but several other folks had to fall out of formation a few times. Following that we did 30 pushups, 50 crunches, 20 more pushups, some sort of exercise where you lie on your back with your legs straight up in the air and then touch one ankle with the opposite hand, then the other ankle with the opposite hand, and repeat–about 30 of those, then held the pushup position halfway down for what seemed like an interminable amount of time (but was probably only 20-30 seconds). Following that we began learning how to fall and get up properly.
• Health and Wellness: Nutrition class for cops. The typical “don’t eat Big Macs for lunch” talk.
• Professional Ethics: Pretty much exactly what you’d expect from the title.

And that’s week one. Next week’s highlights include more Criminal Law, some Bombs & Explosives, Collision Investigation, and Use of Force. Sprinkled in among that is DT, “Cultural Awareness”, Liquor Laws, and some other miscellaneous classes. Homework hasn’t been too bad yet, but I’m spending pretty much every evening doing uniform maintenance. I left for academy so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to break in my boots before polishing them up, so as new creases appear, the polish cracks and falls off. Hopefully this will stop happening as I get them good and broken in.

Highlights in the more distant future include (subject to change):

• Aug 18: Block test 1
• Sep 11, 16-18: Emergency Vehicles Operations Course (EVOC)
• Sep 22: OC-10 practical

Fun times.

Almost as much change as a presidential candidate

02 Aug 2008  in mid-morning  Matt Winckler

Change. Change! Change. That’s what I’m all about. Let’s have some change!

Thursday was my last day as an employee of Battelle. It was an odd feeling, but not anything unexpected. I managed to keep my emotions in check, and as far as I can tell my coworkers managed to do the same, since they refrained from jumping in the air while clicking their heels until after I’d walked out for the last time and relinquished my prox card.

Yesterday I showed up for work at the police station and began my new career. It was a hard day at the office. First off I was issued my ballistic nylon duty belt and gear, body armor, class-A uniform, some wonderfully comfortable tactical boots, the very fine baseball cap shown above, and duty weapon: a .40 caliber Glock 22 that I’m already extremely fond of. The rest of the morning was spent learning how to field strip and clean the Glock, as well as proper shooting stance and grip (something that’s going to take me a lot of practice to unlearn my self-taught bad habits). After a break for lunch, we went to KPD’s firing range and spent the next three hours or so shooting. We went through various exercises and then shot the qualification course (two other new officers were present who needed to qualify for the department, since they’re laterals and not going to academy like me). Despite my bad habits and lack of practice, I still managed to qualify at the “Master” level, shooting 245/250 on one run and 248/250 on the second try. However, as the instructors rightly pointed out, the qualification unfortunately measures “precision shooting” as opposed to “combat shooting”. While the former may come into play sometimes in a police career, the latter is far more important to master, and it is also the one that will require the most work on my part. Additionally, the two laterals mentioned that the academy qualification course (which will actually define which “skill level” pin I get to wear on my uniform) may be more difficult. Actually, I hope that it is more difficult, because if someone like me can come in off the street and shoot at “Master” level, then the designation doesn’t seem to mean much.

On Monday morning I will be sworn in, and immediately thereafter I will depart for Spokane to begin my first week of police academy. I don’t know yet how the schedule and workload will go;the two laterals I was training with yesterday (and probably holding back as a neophyte) had rather conflicting opinions–one said the Spokane academy was a cakewalk, and the other seemed to think it was pretty difficult challenge. I’ll find out for myself soon enough.

Since I don’t expect to have Internet access in any convenient form, I’ll be adding Mystie to this blog so that she can post the interesting stories here before I forget about them.

I would appreciate prayer in general and for the following things in particular:

• That my family would survive the next four and a half months intact. It will definitely be a challenging time.
• That my knee would not explode or fall apart from under me. I saw an orthopedic fellow and got an MRI and everything, and he pointed out some little things but said there are no restrictions on activity, but it still feels queer sometimes.
• That I will be fleet of foot, strong of arm, sharp of wit, and holy of walk.
• That I will have an imperial ton of fun.

Lord willing, I’ll be hitting the streets of Kennewick with a training officer in mid-December.

Next stop: Spokane

23 Jul 2008  in the early morning  Matt Winckler

The KPD training officer called me up this morning.

Him: “So Matt, tell me: do you feel lucky?”
Me: “Uh, you tell me, sir…”
Him: “Oh, you’re lucky.”

It’s official: I’m headed for the Spokane Basic Law Enforcement Academy starting August 4th–a week from Monday. Praise God for working that which seemed extremely unlikely! Despite the short notice, I am very grateful that I will be in Spokane and not Burien. It will make coming home on weekends (especially during the colder months) much easier, and apart from that I get the impression that Spokane is the better of the two academies.

And now, the fun begins.