Playing Catch-up

So, since I've been lazy lately I owe quite a bit of an update:

The past couple weeks have gone well at the Academy. Our class has just passed the halfway point, and still have all 24 members. From what I understand, we've made it through some of the toughest areas, and are on the home stretch. Since my last update (defensive tactics for those keeping score at home...my jaw recovered nicely) we've completed Survival Spanish, Drug Enforcement, and Defensive Driving.

Survival Spanish was interesting, especially with the large Hispanic community in my city. At the time of the class I thought I was able to communicate slightly in Spanish. After speaking, or attempting to speak, with one of my neighbors I found that I am sadly mistaken. He knew just as much English as I do Spanish, making coherent conversation impossible. With that in mind, I have set to actually learning the language, since I figure it will help immensely in the near future.

Driving was where the fun was at. I was pretty liberating to finally get to do things with a car that I've wanted to do since I got my license. I am a little irritated with my score on the night pursuit course, but besides that I scored very well.

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What I really want to touch on is the recent rash of officer fatalities. As a sign of respect, my class keeps a tally of officers lost in the line of duty. At the beginning of the class it was around one officer every three days, which is pretty disturbing. However, what's alarming is the eight officers lost in a week. The majority of the officers lost were on "routine" calls: a traffic stop and a domestic. So far we have had it drilled into our heads that no call is "routine" and to NEVER become complacent, because that's how people get hurt. It's not my place to Monday morning quarterback the decisions of those officers; those men combined would have forgotten more about police work than I can ever hope to learn. I am upset that both cases involved suspects armed with high powered assault rifles, and in one case, body armor. I don't intend this to become a commentary on gun control either, or who should or should not be allowed to own weapons. Those men are cowards, who in cold blood, killed men who were doing their jobs, with families to support, for what? Because they didn't want to go to jail? Even though they had broken the law?

But I digress.

Ultimately, these incidents will do a couple things: 1) I get the feeling that there will be policy changes across the board coming down the pipe, ranging from new response procedures to new weaponry for police units to new training procedures in the academies; and 2) Cadets all over the country, such as myself are learning things that may save them from the same fate. Those brave men will continue saving lives: countless hundreds of their brothers and sisters coming up

With much Respect for our Brothers/Heroes
The Rookie