Post by Police Moderator on May 1, 2013 8:20:21 GMT -5
Training Day
by Alex Teach, Columnist
April 18, 2013
by Alex Teach, Columnist
April 18, 2013
Police officers are required to submit to a rigorous battery of annual seminars and testing to meet state qualifications to remain certified. It’s a compendium of classes assembled to bring us up to date with current laws and trends, to break the rust off of seldom-used skills, and most importantly of all, to meet the requirements set forth in dozens of lawsuits against us over the years in which additional training was mandated.
This training usually exists to excuse the fantastic sums of money people received so as to not make them feel like asshole profiteers, since many of the lawsuits were over someone’s death which mostly was a result of their low skill set in criminal activity, sometimes related to the customer dissatisfaction (aka “unhappiness”), and the 1-in-10 occurrence in which the cop just screwed up. The only requirement of this week of training is to act like it “sucks” to get paid to shoot guns for a whole day and drive cars you don’t own as fast as poop down a chute on another day. Real “torture.”
In the course of such, old (and ranking) officers are put together with junior (read: peon) officers whom in many cases they’ve never met, and the exchange of bullshit begins. Personally, I love it. It’s the only way the new guys can connect with stories from the past; it’s completely tribal in nature. It was through these talks that I now reflected on how policing has greatly matured as a profession. (Relax, “progressive” readers; allow me to explain.)
A few decades ago they issued axe handles out of garbage cans on the back lot of police headquarters to assist in quelling race-riots that plagued Chattanooga. I can safely mention this now because literally all the administrators responsible for that era are deceased.
Read more: chattanooga pulse