The 77th: The Making of a Peace Officer

You You You

Police officer is Charged with an awesome responsibility Has the power to restrict people's liberties Rest them And also has the power to take a life Society pays a tremendous price for a poorly trained officer Why are we anticipating all the command? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm going to say I do a cook on the field I'm sorry Just once I'd like to see it, would you like to try?

Then do it! When it came out, give it to me! You're going to be looking for that out there! Police officers truly are the modern day summer We serve now not just a warlord or some king or something We serve actually the community in itself Go, go, go! is we're trying to prepare these young men and women for the job they're gonna do. Where were they? There's no way. All the way. All the land under the tree. That price comes out in undetected crimes, detected crimes that go unpunished.

And also in civil suits against the police department. On April 19, 1997, the 77th training class of the Albuquerque Police Department Academy met for the first time for their orientation. They will begin 17 weeks of intense training that will lead to their commissioning as peace officers with powers of arrest, investigation, enforcement, and the authority to use reasonable force in the performance of their duties. Only 2-3% of those who initially apply will graduate and begin their careers as police officers. Many will not pass the rigorous entrance requirements.

Others will drop out due to physical injuries, inadequate academic performance, failure to satisfactory complete blocks of training, or to cope with the pressure cooker environment of the Academy. Victor Dobro dislocated his elbow and was forced to drop from the 77th cadet class. His elbow has healed, and he is now in the 78th. The Academy's curriculum covers the enforcement of federal, state, and local law, defensive tactics, police report writing, weapons training, pursuit driving, the use of force and deadly force, interviewing and interrogation, behavioral science,

police laboratory techniques, and all the other requirements that our society demands and individual must master in order to become a peace officer. The Albuquerque Police Department Academy has been graduating officers into the field since 1957. Those individuals who successfully complete their training will become the 77th class. The Lent on the back of the pants, the loose threads on the pocket,

the shoes look like crap, there's some reason they didn't want to meet those expectations. Our society doesn't really prepare people to be police officers, and it's a good thing and be an unpleasant society if it did. But so we have to change people's reaction, their state of mind. Most people walk around being fairly concerned with their feelings, with what's happening in their lives, and these people have to develop the discipline to suppress their own personal feelings, their own personal biases, their own preferences, really, and do whatever is necessary to them, to react to a situation as a police officer needs to react to it. And really the only way to set this up in people or to assess someone's ability to handle this situation, to see if they have enough self-discipline to respond correctly, is to put them in adverse situations

and have some expectations that are going to require a fairly high level of self-discipline to respond appropriately in those situations. Well, you have now officially been instructed a nice time is over. You will, and you have to formation. Take your time. Take your time. That's okay, take your time. Ah! Get back! Why is that being beaten over there? We take the individuals without a lot of life experience, those individuals perhaps don't have a realistic expectation of what they're really getting into. We take those individuals and oftentimes don't have discipline for self-discipline, and that really is a necessity in this line of work, is to have some sort of self-discipline. We take them, we try and, it's called the process of de-individuation. We take away their individual personalities, so to speak, in the first portion of our academy, and we try and formulate them into a team. They're going to be in a law enforcement profession, a profession where they have to work with many others sometimes, sometimes maybe by themselves,

with partnerships within the community, for example. And if they're not prepared to do that, they may have the self-discipline to be able to do it themselves. They'll never be able to cope in this job. You! This cadet has a problem standing up straight. He does not remember, day one, when I told him about bracing, he does not remember to keep his shoulders back to the chest out and his stomach in. He does not remember. You will go ahead and help him. Anytime he seems louching around, you let him know that he is the correct. And the rest of you will not be on that badly. However, here's always taking room for improvement. Make sure that this squad is not no longer disrespected, gentlemen. It is a direct reflection on all of us. A direct reflection on all of us. Especially you, you're off trail. In the grass, gentlemen. Get this ticket! We're trying to give them just an enormous base of knowledge and show them that they have an inner strength that they may have to go to

to save their own life, to save a fellow officer's life, or to save a citizen's life, that they have that within them. Get it out! Get it out! Get it out! Get it out! What the job requires, you have to have that discipline. I think that there's a lot of guys that come into the academy that perhaps didn't go through the military and is needed. It just puts you in a mental frame of mind to take orders when they need to be taken and to discipline yourself to do the job that needs to be done. You have to be careful because it's interesting because you really don't have anyone looking over your shoulder.

For the most part, you're by yourself. You're in a patrol car. You're taking your calls and how you do your job may not be known by others. And so if you're not disciplined, it's probably a real easy job to be lazy in. And so I think the academy's military-style discipline forces you to discipline yourself and get with the program and measure up to the expectations or you're out. Stop! Get back! Get out of your face, then! Get up! Get in the car! Stop! Get in the car! Stop! Hurry up! Hurry up! We're looking for individuals that have that low anxiety. There are prone to be depressed or clearly traumatic kinds of events. We're looking for individuals that have good impulse control. We're looking for individuals that have good impulse control. We're looking for individuals that have really

superior intellectual capabilities. To be a good police officer in the 20th century and going into the 21st century, you really cannot be just of average intelligence. Get me your instructions to read. Mom, this is a new civil rights case. Mary Hahn has practiced law for 12 years, two years with the state public defender's office and 10 years in private practice. Most of her cases involve civil rights violations. She currently is litigating 20 cases against local law enforcement agencies. I think what we want are police officers who have lived life some. Who have had a number of experiences in their own lives. Who would be measured in their responses who are kind and compassionate to their neighbors.

And who would reflect the same kind of respect upon other people as they expect to be given to them. Thank you for the day you've given us. Thank you for the sunshine. How beautiful it is for the time we've had to enjoy playing together. Thank you, Father. Mark Wake was a pastor for 10 years and a history teacher for three. Mark and his wife Nancy have four children and have been married for 11 years. At age 38, he was the oldest cadet in the 77. Father and I ask for safety for me as a good work. And if you would just give me common sense and direction and help in everything that I deal with and with everyone I deal with and may I treat them the way that you would have them to be treated. Thank you for all that you've done for us and for your son or Jesus. Thank you for this food. I'm going to say we pray, Amen. Okay, I'm done. I put my keepers on

and ready to go. I see that he's off to another tour of duty we call it and just pray and throw it that he'll get home safely to us. Part of our training in the academy too was to, as we started to get dressed but our uniform on was to make up scenarios in your mind. What if this happens? What if that happens? And so I start doing that about this time. In fact, my wife can tell you there'll be times we'll be sitting at dinner and I'll be staring off into space and she'll know what's you know, I'm thinking about a scenario. What if? What if this happens? What am I going to do? So that's kind of what's starting to happen in my mind right now. It's like the last two weeks I feel like it just lives in my mind. A significant part of the academy curriculum involved the use of trained actors to simulate potential suicides or mental illness.

Such a nice life here. I leave this day to be going home and dead. My mom started to get Alzheimer's. I know. I work at a nursing home. I can see it's starting. I can see it. I see it. I see it. I don't see it anymore. Maybe we can find something else to do. You like to fix and things right, Shawn? Yeah. You don't have it? You need to go to school, Shawn. You don't have it? that we're trying to incorporate right now, this academy, is we're trying to do much more scenario training than we've ever done. It's very important for us to know that these officers are in a position where they can go out and do the job in every capacity of a law enforcement officer, where they can deal with the community with dignity and respect,

where they have moral courage, where they have a high level of professionalism, and where they have survival skills, and that we train them at the best possible level for them to be able to go home at the end of their shift. We have what we refer to as a use of force continuum. It begins with the officer's mere presence on the scene. Sometimes a uniformed officer

on the scene is enough to quell some kind of disturbance or settle people down a bit. Beyond that we would go to some kind of verbal persuasion. Beyond that of course we go to hands-on techniques and things like that where we're talking about the physical aspects of our job, and then of course we're given the mechanical weapons to apply even deadlier force if necessary. There are certain circumstances where you would go through that use of force continuum in a split second. Those situations are often, as you can imagine, hard to deal with. We have the opportunity sometimes to progressively, naturally, progress through the use of force continuum in some situations, and hopefully in our intention always is to de-escalate the situation, to use that least amount of force necessary to take the situation under control and keep the peace. Because what I'm seeing some of you folks do is you're coming firing, your fingers leaving the trigger, and then you're coming and trying to fire again. And what happens is you're Russian and you have a poor hit. So it's fire, freeze the trigger to the rear,

along with you go forward, then first click, fire your second shot. Does everyone understand what I'm talking about? When an officer is involved in a shooting, by and large they have about 2.2 to 2.3 seconds to go to react to a threat to ending a confrontation. The time involved in most police shootings is very short. We feel that firearms training is an essential task. It's a tool that is very important. In firearms training, it's just one of those important tasks that a police officer must master. It is important that we have extremely stringent standards for hiring police officers. And one of the reasons for that is that the public and the courts expect

a police officer to be a soldier, a doctor, a lawyer, a psychologist, and in some cases a priest. The transformation went really easy for me. It's opposed to somebody who had maybe just been in college and had the opportunity to make a transformation for this civilian and to a soldier, a sailor. But basically we're learning about teamwork, we're learning how to work together,

discipline, lots of discipline. You have to discipline, lots of discipline for this line of work. After the transformation was quite easy for me. Being proud of military, I was exposed to discipline already and it wasn't a hard task for me to make. I trained with a couple of other cadets that I got to know before the academy started. It's nothing. You can't train from what they're going to do because you don't know what they're going to do. You could run and do push-ups, separate things, but when you're running and then they drop you for push-ups, it's different. It's a different kind of pace for me. I never really experienced anything like a

before. You can make your mistakes here and not face the consequences like you were on the street. I'd rather make my mistakes here than go to jail or something I did wrong in the street and it would be a stupid mistake on the street. They're really great learning tools, I think. We've had more scenario training than any other academy and I think it's helped us and I think it's going to be a benefit to us once we go out and actually apply it on the street. The advice I would give to a young officer on the street is it may be that you won't be disciplined

for your behavior. It may be that internal affairs will exonerate you but ultimately a civil rights lawyer may be standing right behind this person that you're about to abuse. Think before you act. Cadets in the academy also study what happens when an officer goes beyond the use of reasonable force. But out here like Rodney King fits here when officers are standing over somebody and actually using force at a level that if we saw it on the street we'd be considered the use of deadly force to get it stopped wouldn't we? Those are kind of students doing that okay. Let's not bullshit each other. You saw that kind of beating going on you'd be thinking of shooting somebody wouldn't you? How you would? You're going to kill the guy right? Is that warm? Anybody disagree with that? If you do strap it on let's talk about it. The question I would have and the question that I would ask is this if police officers turn a blind eye to a younger officer or another officer

who behaves in a manner that is untrained or behaves in a manner that violates the rights of the citizenry. How does that what is that moral cost in terms of the rest of the police force? What does that say to the rest of the police force? We'll back you if you back us. I'll back you now. I expect that I'll get that chit back later. There's all these implicit favor bank behavior and what ends up happening I think is that it goes to the core of our society in terms of what is right and what is wrong and it leads to the erosion of morality within the force itself. The Albuquerque Police Department does a really good job of screening people and of training people and with very few exceptions most of the people out there honestly care about this community they honestly care about the people they're serving and they're very

involved with trying to make things better and when somebody doesn't one of their members doesn't there is going to be somebody within that squad within that chain of command that that cares that wants to make that remedy that situation. Sometimes you just have bad people who do bad things and no amount of training is going to change that. On the other hand if a person is beginning to behave that way not simply not because they're bad but because their rudder is a little off then his peers and his superiors ought to be checking his or her behavior so that it is more confined and more appropriate for a police officer. Listen up what happens if you lose this thing and it goes on the ground the fat guy gets it and he uses

on you what does that create? That creates a whole bag of shit for you because you're probably going to have to shoot him now because you screw it up that's yours and you hang on to it and the fat guy the fat guy strangers are going to be there to throw it back to you you dropped it you better hang on to that thing. We deal with oftentimes a community that is hostile as you know we oftentimes deal with a community that is at you know with your arms open and welcome to our assistance you have to be prepared for both situations and there are times again where an officer might need to make a split decision as to how he should act there's a lot of money more in quarterbacking going on both in our community and that's okay that's part of the job and we all accept it we hope that we've made the right decision and I think because of our training program the training that we instill from the time you're a cadet throughout your entire career

well develop an individual who was capable of making those decisions so making them wisely based on the facts that he has at hand based on his training oh

he's an hour and a half you need all three don't stop but don't stop but if you guys are you do not ever quit ever share that subject a good job training that we instill from the time you're a cadet throughout your entire career

well develop an individual who was capable of making those decisions so making them wisely based on the facts that he has at hand based on his training based on his training ky

all three don't stop but you should not but what you best You do not ever quit, ever. Come on Lincoln, I'm on this. You