In some ways, it felt like the first day of school: a few
familiar faces among the 15 in the room, a few new ones and at
least one that seemed a bit intimidating – probably because of the
badge and gun that goes along with it.
In some ways, it felt like the first day of school: a few familiar faces among the 15 in the room, a few new ones and at least one that seemed a bit intimidating – probably because of the badge and gun that goes along with it.
The scene is light-years removed from the day when Officer Bill visited an assembly of third-graders and fielded such questions as “How fast does your car go?” and “Have you ever shot anybody?”
That day’s lesson was as simple as the questions, a public relations officer’s no-brainer: policemen are your friends.
We thought so that day, helped by the 10-cent “Junior Policeman” badges given out by Officer Bill. But a decade or so later, many of us would begin to believe otherwise – the result of a couple of moving violations or a more serious run-in with the law, or simply because rebellion against authority is as basic to teens as the need to belong.
Some carry those anti-cop feelings into adulthood. The mystique behind “the long blue line” does little to assuage them.
But over the next 12 weeks, the seventh class of the Hollister Citizens Police Academy will see the cloak of mystery removed.
Capt. Bob Brooks said as much during his “welcome” address during the first meeting of the class Wednesday night.
“If your impression of police work is what you’ve seen on TV or in the movies,” Brooks said, “you’ll probably get an eyeful by the time this is over.” We probably will. That’s why we’re here.
After a welcome and overview of the topics to be covered over the 12 Wednesday evenings, the first-day-of-school sense was amplified by the inevitable filling out of forms.
The first was a release of liability, sections of which proved a bit unnerving: “I hereby agree: (1.) That I am aware that the work of the Hollister Police Department is inherently dangerous and that I may be subjected to the risk of death or personal injury…”
Oh, boy.
“…and I freely, voluntarily and with such knowledge assume the risk of death, personal injury or property damage arising from or in any way connected with the use of weapons, law violators, assault, riot, breech of peace, fire, explosion, gas, electrocution or escape of radioactive substances…”
Are they planning a ride-along to Three Mile Island?
But the forms are signed in the faith that the likelihood of any of these actually happening is low. One hundred and eighty people have gone through the six previous Citizens Academies, and none have died – or started glowing in the dark.
Some may have suffered a bruise or two, though. While talking about our venture onto the firing range – which will be in week eight – Crime Prevention and Youth Services Officer Paula Muro said we’d be firing rifles instead of shotguns.
“They hurt,” she said, grimacing slightly and rubbing her right shoulder in memory of the shotgun’s recoil.
Our tour of the surprisingly large department – led by Chief Bill Pierpoint – included the firing range and the armory, behind whose lock and key are kept the department’s arsenal – an awesome sight to anyone not a hunter or NRA member. Forget about the department-issue Smith and Wesson and Glock 9-millimeter pistols; behind this door are .308 and 7.62-millimeter sniper rifles and, most menacing of all, a small rack of H&K MP-5 9-millimeter submachine guns, used by the department’s SWAT team.
One can only thank his maker that these weapons are in the charge of those sworn to protect us.
Adjacent to the firing range is the F.A.T.S. – Firearms Training Simulator. This overgrown video game, powered by an archaic computer running sophisticated software, projects images of suspects – or law-abiding citizens – onto a screen. Using a modified handgun that shoots a laser beam, officers have a split second to determine whether to shoot at the screen image, and the computer records the time it took to make the decision and fire, and whether it was a “clean” – justified – shooting.
We learned on the tour that when the age-old method of dusting for fingerprints fails, a mixture of Super Glue and Liquid Plumber, when applied to an item of evidence, will produce fumes from fingerprints – a technique never dreamed of by Eliot Ness or Joe Friday.
We saw a vehicle straight out of a grade-B spy movie – a white, plain-looking van loaded to the wheelwells with surveillance equipment, including a video camera, four high-sensitivity microphones and even a periscope. The “Snoopmobile,” Pierpoint noted, is used mostly by Unified Narcotics Enforcement Team officers.
We saw the TRAK system, a “fancy fax,” as Pierpoint put it, that links police departments statewide to send and receive bulletins on persons being sought, whether for crimes or as missing persons.
The tragic case of Christina Williams, the 11-year-old Marina girl who was missing for over a year before her body was found, brought to light the necessity of a network of the TRAK system. Prior to that, Pierpoint said, the only law enforcement agency so equipped was the Marina Department of Public Safety. A donation by an anonymous donor, apparently moved by the Williams tragedy, funded TRAK systems for all law enforcement agencies in Monterey County.
The tour left an impression that the Hollister Police Department is a well-equipped agency, particularly for a city the size of the one it serves.
The final hour of the three-hour class involved citizen complaints and the department’s internal investigation of charges of misconduct by its officers. At first, it came as a surprise that Pierpoint would introduce this seemingly benign topic during the first meeting of the class. But as he spoke, it became more apparent that accountability to the public of the 36 sworn Hollister Police officers – Pierpoint never varied from calling them “his” officers – is as paramount as the public’s safety.
“I think it is,” Pierpoint said. “I think you’d want it that way. Would you want officers out there on their own, even if they were keeping the public safety? I think that’s a rhetorical question.”
It was. And it was a good answer.
I left the department walking a bit taller, buoyed by a nurturing security and confidence in a police force that, at first impression, is without parallel in cities like Hollister. The initial bits of knowledge of how – and why – the department works were the beginnings of an insight that until now had been camouflaged in blue and protected by the invisible line that separates the police from the citizenry that often distrusts and maligns them, sometimes fears them and rarely understands them.
Cutting through that invisible line is the point of the Citizens Academy.
