Now I don't post in the journal section often, as my patrols are usually boring and uneventful. Unless its a team up or a big charity drive.

Anyways the reason of this post is to talk about Citizen's Academies. Alot of Police Departments are doing this to educate the citizens about police procedure and how it works in their area. I have been going to ours for the last 5 weeks and I have learned a lot. They even go into information on how to enact citizens arrest. And as the Police Chief said, this academy is to educate us as citizens to assist the police in making our town a safer place. Luckily in Minnesota, citizens have a lot of rights as far as enacting citizens arrest, as a matter of fact, we have almost the same rights as a police officer does to arrest someone.

Last night, I hit up the Chief, a really nice guy, and asked him his opinion on Kick Ass. Just curious as to what a professional thought about it and RLSH. Sadly he wasn't familiar with the film, so I explained it to him to see what his take would be on it. He asked if I thought there might be people out there that may try to act out as vigilantes after seeing this and I said I was uncertain. Then I asked him about RLSHs which he hadn't heard of and explained what we do. Didn't tell him about what I do other than making suits, but asked him what he thought of people dressing up and taking on personas and doing good deeds, who worry about being trained and protected. He said he was all for it. He thought it was great to have citizens take an active interest in making their communities better places to live, and if they want to dress up and take on persona's, he has no problem with it. As long as they don't take the law into their own hands. I assured him that most in the community are interested in helping people and charities, and acting as a second set of eyes for law enforcement and that it is not their intention to go around beating up people they think are guilty of crimes.

Anyways I thought he was really cool about it, and I think with all of the officers I have met on top of my original contact, could become friends and assets to me in the future. Plus the info I am learning on how the local system operates is invaluable.

@Raz: very interesting post!

When you're contemplating citizen's academies, don't forget CERT.

Yeah I am still trying to find a local CERT program, but haven't had much help from the guys who are responsible for it in my area. I really want to finish up after doing all of the online courses for it.

@Tothian-It seems that the program is offered on a city by city basis. From what I understand they do it in other parts of the country, but theres nothing that says all cities have to offer it. I know the county Sherrif offers courses here too, but I have yet to get in on one of those as they fill up pretty quickly.

It costs nothing to attend, except for your time.

It is a specified period of time. Here its a 7 week course that I take on Wednesday nights. I am not sure if we get a certificate at the end or not, but our police department is doing this so that they can have citizens a little more in the know about what they can do to help the Police.

It is all about showing the community what the police do. There isn't formal training, but there is alot of hands on things. Last week we studied use of force and where and when it is necessary, both for police and civilians. Part of that we were tazed with one of their guns (which they got grumpy cause I laughed when I got it) Then we were shown some techniques of how to take someone into custody (citizens arrests in Minnesota allow us to physically detain someone for the police to pick up, as well as track them if they don't wait and retrieve them) We also learned some techniques with the batons. Which was funny cause my instructor is on the St Paul SWAT team and one of the actions we had to take was to push them back with the baton to keep them out of our space and he looked at me and said "Back it down junior." and giggled, to which I replied "I was dialing it back." which I was. LOL

This week we learned about deadly force, and got to handle unloaded weapons that the local police carry. Which was cool. And after that we did what was called a simunition, which is a live role play with us as the police and a couple of the officers acting as the bad guys. We were suited up with guns that fired a detergent round, which was just that a bullet with deteegent in it instead of a slug. With what we knew, the police Chief would give us the scenario such as "You're pulling over a car at 3am, expired tags and a headlight out." And then we had to act as an officer to the best of our ability. and if we felt it was proper to fire on the bad guys, we had to do it. Most of us got shot. We went through maybe 15 different scenarios. Felt bad for the first pair to go through it as the bad guys came out of their car shooting. LOL I tell you though, having to make those decisions in a split second make you think. One of my scenarios was a depressed guy, his wife called and let us in, he had his back to us and we didn't know what he was doing. When he turned around he had a knife to his throat (A rubber practice one but it was supposed to be real) We talked him down and got the knife from him, but he kept moving towards us and we had to take into consideration that he could kill himself or lunge at us, and should we have our guns out, or should we shoot him, or should we try to reason with him. It was a tough choice.

Another scenario that a couple of the others got was they pulled over a car and the driver came out with a gun to his own head. They tried to talk him down and thought they did, but as he was lowering the gun, he put three shots into the nearest "officer" and two more into the second, before either of them could get their guns out.

I don't envy making those decisions when you have to follow the letter of the law. Its tough when you have guidelines, but the crazy person you just pulled over may have nothing to lose and just go off.

Sweet. I found one in my area; I'm totally gonna do this in about two years (you have to be 21- curse my lack of oldness!)

RazorHawk,
Wow, that sounds pretty intense. And could actually be very useful.

Sparrow,
There is some other kinds of similar training you might be able to do in the mean time. I'll contact you about this privately.

Its well worth it Sparrow. It is definitely a slap in the head to add a random element into the mix. Makes you think.

Sounds like there is nothing in it in my area. O well, also sounds like I've taken enough other classes to get the jest of it.

At the very least everybody who plans to actually patrol the streets should learn what they can/can't do and how to do a proper legal citizen's arrest.

I would love to do the citizen's academy here in P-twon. But the hours are the times I work.

Captain Black completed a course with the FBI's Citizen's Academy.

That would be something I would like to do too, the FBI academy. I am watching for the next county sherrif academy here.

We dont have anything like that here I wish we did so as to encourage people to report the bootleggers and the Dangerous offenders to the police instead of just ignoring the problem

Well you can contactyour local law officials and see if they have heard of doing academies, maybe if they get enough people interested in them they will look into starting one. Our local Police have been doing this for five years now, and I am glad they did. I have such a far greater appreciation for our officers, and hopefully I have made friends of all of them and can rely on them in the future. I wish the Fire Dept would do something like this.

the closest citizens academy to me is in newark and that is just not practical for me right now.

i did however, find that the local community college has a public safety academy that has firefighting and emergency training. i may look into that.

That would be an awesome thing to do Champion. All the knowledge you can gain in those fields is golden.

yeah the local fire station always has signs out asking for volunteers as well. ive thought about doing that before, i just have way too much going on right now to even look into it.

I hear that. Course I have a weirder problem volunteering for the fire department locally. I live near the border of two suburbs. New Brighton and St Anthony. I am about 2-3 minutes from the St Anthony FD but cannot volunteer there because I live in New Brighton. And I cannot volunteer in New Brighton because I live more than 5 mins from the station. So yeah, I can't help at either one.

There is always Wild land Fire Fighting, of course it might be too close to the start of the season to get on a crew.

lol wow that is weird.

if u have to live within 5 mins i may not be able to do it etheir. then again im not that far.