As man of you may or may not know I've been engulfed in the police academy here in Utah for the past 4 weeks of a 16 week intial block of training. Following this 16 weeks of training I'll return back to my home assignment area as a ranger for the state of Utah working primarily on Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake with regular patrols as well in the Wasatch mts. on 4-wheeler/dirtbike and snowmobiles during the winter. Sounds like fun huh? I'll tell you more about what a ranger at Antelope Island does later on for now I wanted to share about the academy. Oh one day I'll even tell you about the forgettable experience at officer candidate school this past winter, which was definitely something I'm glad my sleep deprivation has allowed me to forget, or at least forget most of it.
In Utah law enforcement officers carry a gun and a badge, along with lots of specialized training to be able to fulfill their duties in a lawful manner. I never realized how much information and responsibility police officers/deputys/rangers/trooper...etc. have to carry and what judgements they must make involving their lives and the lives of others on a daily basis. And so in all it takes 16 weeks of 40 hr week, sometimes more, to gain what is called POST certification. This stands for Peace Officer Standards and Training. Thus, those who complete this block or academy of 16 weeks are deemed certified and given the badge to serve and protect. It means they've learned how to properly protect the public and uphold the law. So when you're done there's an academy and you receive your department's badge. You are now certified in the state of Utah. For laymen it means that anyone certified in Utah from POST can pull you over and ticket or arrest you. Yes it means even a state park ranger working at Antelope Island or Lake Powell or wherever can pull you over or detain for breaking ANY law in the state of Utah or if they have "reasonable suspicion" or "probable cause". Many jurisdictions however have policy that will dictate when and where they want you using your powers. So if you're speeding down I-15 and you see a ranger or an officer from a different part of the state he may or may not be able to pull you over. It's best to obey the law no matter what because even if his jurisdiction tells him he shouldn't pull you over for speeding outside of his area he/she can still do it. And they'd be well justified in writing a citation, giving you a warning or if they didn't want to deal with it they could call a local officer to handle the situation. This of course puts me in the precarious situation of having to give tickets.
First and foremost, I HATE TICKETS. Maybe you didn't hear me so I'll repeat, I HATE TICKETS. Yes it's because I tend to get alot of them and don't like the way it feels, the money I have to pay and attitude of the officer probably due to the fact that I look like I'm a 20 something year old punk. For the record I'm actually 34 years old now thank you very much. I'm a firm believer that education and stern warnings can do almost as much good as a 150 dollar ticket would. Though sometimes if you're blatantly and willingly breaking laws you definitely need to get slammed. But enough about that, let's talk about the academy.
Going into the academy, I'll call it POST from here on out, I was hesitant and not looking forward to it. Afterall I just spend two months of hell in OCS with little sleep, and more stress than anyone outside of a combat zone. Strict only begins to describe my military experience. So a para-military training environment for 16 weeks isn't what I wanted. Lucky for me POST has since gone away with para military due to the fact of municipalities complaining that officers graduating from POST were too hard, tough, strict and well, just too military like. I don't take offense to that and I'm happy they changed. Military service, training and soldiers in general are definitely a step above police officers in being hard and to the point. As I've found becoming a police officer is about being fair, emphathetic while talking nice and thinking mean. You never know when someone is going to pull a gun on you during a "routine" traffice stop. BTW, traffice stops are never "routine" as we quickly learned.
POST is held in Sandy, Utah on the new beautiful Salt Lake Community College campus complete with dorms and an indoor firing range, weight room and small gym like training rooms with mats. I was able to gain a spot in the dorm which means saving money on gas and food, not to mention time resting . Classes start at 7 am and go until 6 pm with a one hour break near lunch time. If I were to commute from Tooele I'd have to waste alot of precious time and gas money in the morning to get here. Staying in the dorms is great because they provide me with a nice hotel like room and FREE MEALS! Yep, free meals on a nice meal card is awesome. We get $22 per day to eat and the have a nice cafeteria with plenty of fresh, grilled and packaged foods to choose from. I have a roomate who is going to be a deputy in Emery county. That's near Castedale, southwest of Price. He's a big guy and was previously working as a jailer.
The first day of POST we started with 40 cadets as they call us. We are down to 38 I believe as 2 couldn't pass the screening PT during the first day. They also since have divided us into two different groups of 18 and 20 cadets to make training easier. Though we still sometimes have combined classes together. Everything else including the gun range, defensive tactics, PT and the like is done seperately. We do four 10-days per week of classes and training. Our routine is consistent with defensive tactics and PT being held 2-3 times per week. Those classes always happen, though many of us wish that they'd let us skip a day or two. Trust me, PT is nothing to sneeze about in POST. In between PT and defensive tactics (DT) we have classes that range from every type of law, to search and seizure, first aid/cpr, emergency mgt/FEMA, and on and on an on....It never seems to end, and we've just begun!
Since for some reason I seem to do very well in PT I wanted to share some of that with you as it's something that 99% of cadets despise. Though we only have it 2-3 times per week compared with 7 days per week in the Army life it's still very different. PT sessions are scheduled for 1 to 1.5 hrs in POST. All of it is timed so that you'll have a baseline to show improvements from the beginning of POST to the end. The majority of things we do are circuits, a series of very intensive excercises that test muscle and mental stamina. I will say one good thing about it is that it always rotates to something different. Some circuits are terrible while some are just out of this world ridiculously more like torture. Being the 2nd oldest in the group at 34 years old I even surpise myself sometimes by finishing first each session and day. I've gained nicknames such as: animal, monster, antelope (because of my running prowess) and killer. LOL, funny huh? I take it all in stride and like to tell fellow cadets I despise PT as much as them but go as fast as I can just so I can get it done quicker. It's the truth!! Personally I'm amazed at my ability to do some of the things I do, especially running with such little practice. In my mind it has to come from 50% mental strength 40% genes and the other my actual little muscles doing the work. There's really no way to describe how I do what I do. I dare anyone off the streets to come in and do what we do and tell me it's nothing. I'm talking workouts of (my times) 30 to 48 minutes straight of maximum freaking heart rate!!! Really,unreal stuff. Might look easy on paper but doing it is another story.
Ok so for me here is the "easiest" circuit we've done so far: I finished this in 28 minutes.
Planted broad jump for 50 feet, 50 pushups, 50 situps, 50 air squats and a 1 mile run (DONE 2x's at max speed. Remember you are being timed.) A few of the faster guys seem to think this circuit is won by getting out really fast. I usually end up passing them at the first 1/2 mile mark.
Here is nother one we did today which has been the most difficult for me so far: I finished this in 44 minutes. The next closest cadet was 46 minutes.
Bench press 155 lbs (each cadet tries to use as much weight close to their own body weight as they can. You are penalized for lifting less and given a bonus if you lift more. I weigh 170 lbs right now so I was penalized a bit on time.), one-legged dipping lunges for 75 feet, 10 over handed pull-ups, rowing on a rowing machine for measured 800 meters, 10 overhead barbell raises using 44 lbs then you carrying 2 of these 44 lb weights (total of 88 lbs) up 8 flights of stairs, lifting them over your head for another 10x's before carrying them back down the 8 flights. How does doing this 4 freaking x's sounds to you? Not very good huh? Not for me either.
I honestly thought I might pass out from this one. It would be interesting to measure my heart rate to see where it's at as I'd bet it's close to 200 bpm. I'm getting tired just thinking about that workout. We just finished that one today and tomorrow we have another PT session of something hopefully different. LOL.
So that's the brief on POST, aka the academy right now. In my next entry I'll go into further detail about some of the fun stuff such as scenario and firearms training as well as the not so fun but equally important law and search & seizure classes. And oh yes, this next week we start evasive and driving with the cars and field sobriety testing. If you have any drunkards who want to get paid to drink hard liquor we need a few next week so we can get hands-on with real drunks. I'm out for now, more later...maybe. Talk Nice, Think Mean.
Michael aka Chucky
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