Drunks, taser and court

It has been a while since my last blog, and for that I apologize. The last couple of weeks have been very busy! We had our final test last Wednesday, and POST exam today! I did well in my last exam scoring a 92%, and as I write this I am waiting to find out the results of the POST test, fingers crossed! I actually feel good about the test, if I missed 30% and get a fail it is because I fell asleep half way through!

This is the last day of Academy, five months ago, this day was so far away, and now we are here. I am so excited. Tomorrow I will be a certified Peace Officer in the State of Colorado. It feels really good.

I want to tell you about some of the stuff we have been doing this last week or two, as I haven’t had the chance to do so yet.

Firstly our DUI wet bar was a lot fun. Getting drunken people to do roadside tests was very educational. We had practiced these techniques in the classroom on each other and had learnt what signs to look for that would indicate intoxication, with out the use of a breathalyzer. This was all well and good but didn’t really make sense until we performed these exams on the intoxicated.

Taser was a kick in the butt! You can take that as a literal statement. Getting fifty thousand volts of electricity running through your body is an experience you don’t forget too easily. We got some great video footage of the event, some of which is not family suitable as you can imagine.

Mock crime scenes, probably one of my favorite exercises of the academy; it incorporated everything we had learnt thus far into one simulation using actors and props. We were divided into groups and dispatched to our scene. The whole scenario was played out from start to finish; we could utilize our arrest control techniques, weapons if we had to, and then eventually process the crime scene, interview suspects and write our reports.

From dispatch to clearing the scene took about four hours. The report writing for the scenario took another five hours. A week later we had to go to the Jefferson County court house where real DA’s played judges and defense attorneys, we took the stand and they ripped us apart, well they ripped my class mates apart, I didn’t get called up. It was really cool to see the whole justice system in action from start to finish.

T-minus 12 days!

12 academy days left and its graduation time! We are so close I can taste it. I can’t believe we are here already. It seemed like only yesterday we were in business attire. The past 18 weeks have flown by.

We are completely finished with the skills side of our training, last Thursday was our final testing for arrest control. We do still, however, have a couple of hurdles ahead of us before we got that badge pinned on our chest. We have one more PT assessment, a five second taser ride (voluntary), and the Lookout Mountain run. Besides that it’s all downhill from here.

Crime scene investigation is the topic for this week. We have 24 hours of everything from crime scene preservation and documentation to finger printing and photography. It is really a lot of fun, and I’m learning a great deal. Investigations are something I would really enjoy doing later on in my career. The whole process fascinates me, the investigators we have here at the Sheriff’s office are very talented and I enjoy studying previous cases that they bring into our lectures for us.

Thursday and Friday is DUI class. From what I understand we have some live subjects come into class, they get drunk and we get to deal with them. I hear it is a very interesting couple of days. I will let you know all about it, and just in case you were wondering all the positions for drunks are filled so save yourself the time of filling out an application!