Live, at Zero Seven Forty-Five

Please welcome Recruit Boyd. Recruit Boyd comes to The Lakewood Police Department as a member of the 2019-2 Combined Regional Class, with a unique background - he is an Emmy Award winner! This achievement, aside from being an incredible personal achievement, exemplifies the high quality of individuals in this Academy.

My name is Lakewood Police Recruit Boyd. When I was going through the hiring process, I loved reading past Academy blogs to see what the academy was like. I’m now honored to share a glimpse of what I’m getting to experience.
 

De-escalation role play

My first real introduction to law enforcement was when I worked as a TV news producer for NBC in Colorado Springs and CBS in Denver. I grew a deep respect for police while reporting on the dangers and scrutiny officers face on a daily basis. I often wondered: What’s their training like? How do they deal with people always having a cell phone out, ready to record?

Despite only being a few weeks into the academy, I’ve learned the key to dealing with tough situations is good communication while treating everyone with dignity. It’s a simple concept, but it goes a long way. Not only is the staff teaching us how to serve the community with the utmost respect, they’re demonstrating it in the way they treat us. That’s not to say that we’re exempt from “team building exercises”… i.e. corrective punishment. I’ll have more on that a little later.

So far, driving fast and shooting guns is on hold. The instruction consists of eight hours of lecture via PowerPoint, five days a week. Just think of drinking from a fire hydrant and you’ll understand. There is a lot of information to digest and remember, especially for our weekly tests each Monday. Classes have ranged from criminal code, to anti-biased policing, to the criminal justice system. If a recruit scores less than 80 percent on four tests, they will be dropped from the academy. Lots of late-night studying has us chugging coffee during our classroom breaks!

You’d think that PT would be extremely stressful, but most would agree that it’s been a nice break from the classroom. Only one person has puked so far during a workout, so I’ll count that as a success! The PT program is Crossfit-based and there are a lot of partner workouts. It’s designed not just to improve our fitness, but also to help us rely on our teammates, just like we’ll be doing on the street as uniformed police agents.

One of the best parts of the academy is becoming a family. Even though there are 42 individuals, we’re banding together to become one and making sure no one fails. Everyone is sharing notes on Google Drive. Several study groups meet on the weekends to make sure everyone passes. One recruit even held a “boot shine workshop” to avoid “team building exercises.” However, we’re not always successful at that.

This is Staff’s idea of “team building:” Each morning during formation, the staff quiz us on classroom material. On one particular morning, the questions happened to be on geography. One of my fellow recruits forgot a street name, so the instructors had us run to the end of the street to see if the light pole was still there. After several jogs to that area, I can confidently say that the light pole is indeed still there. It’s always funny to see drivers give us weird looks when we run in our suits.

No matter what is being thrown at us, all of us are determined to make it through the academy so we can serve our communities with dignity. I can’t wait to see what the rest of this journey holds!