Public Safety Academy shows greatness of local emergency personnel

I recently sort of completed the Stevens Point Citizens Public Safety Academy, which was formerly known as the Citizens Police Academy and which I dubbed, before even setting foot in the classroom, “Police Academy 4 1/2: Citizens Back on Patrol” after the great 1987 film “Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.” Some classics deserve a true sequel (“Police Academy 5” was horrible and doesn’t count), even if it is a real-life version featuring a cast of mostly normal people, none of whom can make cool sound effects like Michael Winslow as Sgt. Larvell Jones.
I only “sort of” completed it because work and family commitments caused me to miss six of the 10 classes, including the coolest ones in which class members got to drive a police car, shoot guns and get tasered. OK, I’m glad I missed that last one, as I’ve touched an electric fence before and have no desire to ever allow electricity to run through my body again.
But the classes I did attend were heavily informative, even if they did go a little too long, and they did leave me knowing a lot more about what police officers and other emergency personnel do, making me appreciate them even more.
Led by Lt. Ron Carlson, a 31-year veteran of the Stevens Point Police Department, the class included lessons about dispatchers, ambulances, Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) enforcement, crime-scene evidence collection, the Fire Department, defense and arrest tactics, field-training officer scenarios and the ones mentioned before.
Aiding Lt. Carlson were Kevin Ruder, Stevens Point police chief, and a host of other emergency personnel, including dispatchers, detectives, other police officers and firefighters. All were well versed in their roles and all would have my trust should I ever be involved in a situation in which I need their help.
Ruder told the 14 people in the class – community leaders chosen because they could communicate what they learned to other people in the community – the purpose of them being there was to inform us about what the lives of police officers, firefighters and other public safety workers are like.
Lt. Carlson said no two days are exactly the same. “It’s an adventure,” he said. “To see how policing is done in your community is a lot different than the version you think you know from television. This is not an edited version of ‘Cops’ you may be used to seeing.”
It’s also not “CSI,” “Criminal Minds,” “21 Jump Street,” “Cop Rock” (we could only hope police officers would break out into song and dance when the mood struck) or, sadly, “Police Academy.” Honestly, I always knew television and film highlighted the excitement and downplayed, and in most cases don’t show, the legwork that goes into a police officer’s job.
Detective Ken Lepak said it best, though. “The public’s perception from CSI is ridiculous,” he said, noting people often expect officers to use the gadgetry featured on the show to collect evidence and put the bad guys behind bars, sometimes within an hour’s time, like they do on the show.
He said he once asked a nurse who had a piece of jewelry stolen and who demanded CSI-like skills in resolving the case some simple questions that caused her to rethink her demand. “Do you watch ‘Grey’s Anatomy’? Do the nurses and doctors at your hospital go around making out with each other all over the place like they do on that show?” Touché, Detective Lepak, I say.
Of the four classes I did attend, the one I found most interesting was the one focusing on dispatchers. Many people probably don’t think about these people much, I know I didn’t, but they usually are the first people one has contact with when phoning in an emergency. As a result, dispatchers have to be calm, collective, direct to the point and capable of helping the person that made the call, all while informing the correct emergency personnel about the scene they need to go to and what has happened there.
Stevens Point has seven dispatchers who work four 10-hour shifts per week, answering 100,000 calls as a unit. Dispatcher Kim Zvara told the class people often complain dispatchers sound short with them when they call, but said it’s just them being blunt, as they are often dealing with multiple calls and other situations that may be deemed more important.
While in the dispatch center at the Police Department, the two dispatchers received a call from a concerned mother about her two children she couldn’t find. The dispatchers immediately made a number of calls, to officers patrolling the area, and within minutes both children were located, much to the relief of the class participants. For the dispatchers, though, it was just another situation they helped to quickly resolve.
Another interesting class I attended was the one about OWI enforcement. Officer Steven Spath told the class 81 motorists have been cited for OWI in Stevens Point this year, 279 were cited in 2009, 230 in 2008 and 186 in 2007.
Those statistics, he said, would be a lot higher if the Police Department had more personnel to bust the drunk drivers, noting he estimates 80 percent of the people driving on Main and Clark streets in Stevens Point late at night on the weekends are probably over the legal limit. I guess I know where I won’t be driving at those times.
Officer Spath showed the class a video of an actual OWI bust that occurred in Stevens Point several weeks earlier. The culprit was clearly not fit to be driving, despite his best efforts to tell the officer he was.
I also appreciated Officer Spath telling the class Wisconsin’s OWI laws are the most lax in the country and they need to be revamped to make our roads safer. He said someone who is arrested for OWI in this state can be bailed out that night and be on the road again, still drunk, noting he has arrested people two times in one night for OWI.
Throughout the 10-week seminar, class members learned quite a bit of this type of information. Had I been there more, I’m sure my brain would be on overload. Then again had I been there to get tased, my brain may have lost all this information and I wouldn’t have had anything to share.