(00:00:00) It used to be that if you wanted to become a police officer, you would first get a job with a department and the department would send you to the academy to be trained but five or six years ago the state decided to change that officials thought it might be better and easier to have uniform standards and the best way to do that seemed to mean training police in a state-run program. So now students are responsible for completing a college degree first and then passing a series of tests to qualify for the state's eight-week course this series of reports follows, the progress of class number five which started during the summer and in particular focuses on the hopes of two of the students in that class Diane called office and Steve-O conic. It isn't going to make one bit of difference how good an arrest you made or how what a terrific investigation you did if you don't get up there and impress the (00:00:49) jury with the facts. (00:00:52) It's a muggy afternoon in a classroom at Lincoln High School in Bloomington over the sound of a fan. Mary bjorklund is telling 27 police trainees how to make a good impression as a witness in court bjorklund is the Richfield City attorney and she tells her class. She knows how to make a police officer look good or bad on the stand bjorklund is just one of a number of professionals who teach the police skills training course in Bloomington. There are other training sites around the state as well. The eight-week courses start every few weeks and bjorklund is talking to class number five class number five has 27 students in it five of whom are women. One of those students is 21 year old stivell conic of Coon Rapids. He says he has wanted to be a police officer ever since he was rescued by one when he was a small boy. (00:01:39) Basically my decision for becoming a police officer is wanting to help people believe it or not every police officer. It's on the street that I've talked to that's their biggest reason for liking police work is because you're out there. Visible you're there to help and everybody has this preconceived image of what a police officers like he sits in the squad car. He doesn't do anything except write tickets and arrest people that's wrong. When when a police officers out in the street. He's handling calls where maybe he can go pick up a dog at a person's house fine. No problem. Then the drop the dog off next minute. He gets another call. He's got to be at a hundred and ten percent to go on a medical if somebody's hurt. So it's a position where you're always going. You're always helping people but you have the variety to do what you want to do and how you want to do (00:02:25) it. Well Connick like the other members of his class has already completed two years of Law Enforcement Education before being admitted to the skills course students must take the Minnesota peace officer standards and training test. That's a written test. Then they take a series of psychological exams as well as agility tests students must have some form of advanced first aid and be given a medical exam as well Agility Test which include obstacle Is do not distinguish between men and women 22 year-old Dianne koffice of Roseville says she thinks the days of the difference between men and women in police work. Our past has more comfortable in the news to be and when it's not so much camaraderie between the Sexes. I mean there is not the other girls are waiting for the girls to go and all the guys are only wish the guys would it's totally different least has been so far every type and everybody and I think they come to the conclusion that there are women who can do probably better in guys and vice versa. Of course the idea is that if we all want to get through we are going to help each other both cough is a narcotic say they like all the hard work they've gone through so far even though they have no guarantee of a job yet and they liked the idea of the state overseeing All Phases of police training as well as testing and requiring officers to keep up educational credits. Even after they have jobs Diane called office. I like to professionalism. I like it the idea making the curry out of it instead of like a civil service exam with his choose mouth Street. You're going to people Want to go in law enforcement. I want to make a career out of it instead of just a job and it's totally positive when you think of that way because if they're going to want to do it and they're going to go through all the stuff we did and all the standards and all the time and all the money to get here. You can give it your best shot house is not worth it over the next several weeks call for so Connick and their classmates will learn how to shoot a Rest Drive take evidence as well as how to handle cases of domestic disputes and sexual assaults. They'll also learn how to be human beings taking courses like Stress Management Steve volcanic thinks he'll learn how to deal with his feelings on the job by drawing from his own experience. (00:04:28) If it's something I can relate personally like a situation is taking place where I've met have been in the same situation or could possibly be in the same situation. It would just depend on personal feelings that are going to come into my mind but being a police officer. I can't let them affect the way I do my job. I'm going to have to use a certain amount of restraint and look at the problem from all different sides like you say. A lot of the situations aren't going to be you know easy. There's going to be some real tough ones and I'm just going to have to rely on what I've done what I've known from the call what the call is what the situation is, whatever you want to call it to dictate what my solution is going to (00:05:16) be both. Oh conic and koffice say they'll be listening very carefully in the next few weeks. The two students also say they've already learned one important lesson that is police officers. Their number one priority will be to go home alive every night. One of the most important aspects of police work and the subject that underscores the balance of the training course is learning how to handle guns. Despite the impression left by many television programs police officers rarely fire their guns and many say they hope they never have to but guns are reality and police work and by the third week of the skills course students must have mastered their use or start over. (00:05:57) In (00:05:57) five seconds to at the call Target to at the other. Do I do? (00:06:06) Line ready? Right (00:06:11) Elaine Brown is a police officer with the city of Burnsville. She is also one of many officers attorneys and psychologists who teach an eight-week police skills training course at Lincoln High School in Bloomington. She is out on the range with class number five teaching 22 men and five women how to handle Smith & Wesson handguns guns that are very much like the ones each will have when they eventually become police officers. The guns have a 4 inch barrel and cost anywhere from 250 to 300 and twenty five dollars a piece Brown is part of a team of police officer instructors who try to teach students the technical aspects of shooting a handgun as well as a shotgun if they can't pass the week's test Brown says they don't go on. This is the first spot where they're going to have trouble. This is now their third week and they've only had six days to qualify with a handgun. We can only bring him out here for a week at a time. I'm and then on the sixth day. They must qualify if they don't they can't go any further such as the night range because we don't want them bring them out here. If they don't know enough about a gun during the day for safety reasons decision shoot. They can't go any further unless they qualify a lot of these students have never held a gun before in their lives. And so they are really working their butts (00:07:27) off. We just go (00:07:32) well some students shoot Brown has the others cleaning their guns officers clean their guns after each time. They are fired while requirements vary between individual departments police officers around the state routinely must re-qualify on their guns three to four times a year and officers are also required to take additional classroom education in many areas to keep up with current practices. Diane called office is a 22 year old Roseville resident who hopes to become a police officer. She has never shot a gun in her life, but qualified easily. In fact, her instructors complimented her at the end of a week's training. I feel more confident. I did the test you on as much accuracy, but safety efficiency, like in the shotgun handling they want you to be able to get up there and be confident and what to do in case of jams or something like that. Besides giving you can't go sorry instructor. It's Jam if you're on the streets, so that's most what you learn and you also learn to be so safety-wise that there's different procedures. You have to learn by steps and by the end of the week of qualifications you do without even thinking so becomes so much of a habit forming that he won't think about it when you're on the street and it was just be easy to encase do ever have to use your own (00:08:47) to shoot all the rounds up (00:08:49) and anxious into the Week shooting comes when Captain Jim Kinsey of The Cottage Grove Police Department marks up the targets for scoring six. Target is a black silhouette with a dotted line that denotes what he calls the Kill Zone while Kinsey passes students for the percentage of bullets that hit within the Zone. He's equally concerned about the bullets that hit outside the dotted line. He says that's because police are trained to be conscious of people other than the suspect Kinsey's work with the police skills training courses part-time and he's primarily concerned with proficiency other aspects of the course will train an officer to deal with the rare, but real possibility of having to kill someone Captain Kinsey. (00:09:29) It's true. All we're trying to do is teach the person how to kill basically because the only time a police officer can use his weapon nowadays is to save his life or someone else's and if you reach that point in your career where you have to use your weapon, I want these kids to be able to save their own life. That's my main concern. Okay. (00:09:53) Kinsey has taught young officers. Now for five years. He says every once in a while. He'll get a student who's afraid of guns or doesn't have the strength to shoot that happened to one student in this class. But after a week of squeezing a racquetball, she qualified with the best score among her classmates 21 year old Steve-O Connick of Coon Rapids had never shot a gun before this week either even as he moves on to other parts of his training though. He says he's thinking about the role guns will play in the job. He hopes to have some day. I don't think of (00:10:23) a police officer is a person to go out and kill people I think of a person police officer as a person that's out there to help people and to protect his own life for somebody else's life. If necessary. I've always been able to rely on myself of the situation gets tough. I can handle the situation but if it comes right down to it, yeah, then I'm going to have to step in and (00:10:44) You're going to (00:10:44) take someone's life if it's necessary. (00:10:51) By the time students have reached the halfway point in their training. They've learned a lot about some of the major responsibilities. They may have when they get jobs at this point Diane and Steve know how to shoot drive make arrests and interrogate suspects, but they're just beginning to recognize a crucial aspect of police work stress police departments in the Twin Cities area are beginning to Institute Stress Management Programs for their officers and the skills course addresses the problem throughout a student's training the issue surfaces during something called the decision shoot each student watches a seen on film in the presence of two officers in one case students were told that the man in the scene is suspected of molesting a child that appears nearby the two officers feed the student information about the surroundings and the student must then decide whether or not to use a gun in Steve's case the suspect pulled a gun on the child and Steve shot (00:11:44) him before they we had it. They said, you know, you got to start thinking like a police officer and you got to got to start acting like one if you really don't Believe in your own mind you at least have to put on the ACT and when you get in a decision shoot, you really feel like you're out there and you're doing it and you're you're trying to handle the situation and it's scary. It's scary as (00:12:02) hell Steve says the decision shoot is the closest. He's come yet to Street action. Diane says, it was a turning point for her because it made her realize just how much responsibility a police officer has four other people when we came the decision shooter was like not so much people shooting at us, but people shoot another people and we had decided whether the shoot them first to protect other person and I think that's what threw me off the most because I mean I did did well in decision shoot but emotionally making the decision that quick and then they stopped the film and ask all these questions. Why'd you do this? Why'd you do that? Why did you why did you say this? How come you do this? Why'd you get down and being able to justify yourself and come back with some answers by done by time. You were done. You were so emotionally drained. I mean I got there and I felt like my heart just went down to my knees and I lost it what the decision shoot reinforces in training is what Steve called learning how to think like a police officer. It's something Lieutenant Richard O'Brien of Minneapolis spent a week underscoring as he taught students about death investigation fraud forgery and criminal sexual conduct. For example, O'Brien told the students during a lecture on interviewing victims of sexual assault that they must be sympathetic but business like learning to think like a police officer says a Brian means relating to emotions but not reacting to them. (00:13:19) Everyone's got attitude. But the thing that they're supposed to be as quote unquote professionals and not get this way. We try to town don't get emotionally involved either with the victim or the suspect you have to be sort of detached in this business and it comes with experience you're dealing with it over and over day after day and you get to accept it and young officers. I think it does bother them and it does bother some people they can't really go on and place (00:13:44) work the day O'Brien lectured about She will assault the room was almost mobile students shifted uncomfortably around in their chairs and fidgeted, especially when O'Brien talked about assault on children in some cases. The lieutenant said officers would have to play along with a suspect to get him or her to confess Steve says that's a part of his job that may be hard for him when he starts but he knows it has to be done its role (00:14:06) playing it's yeah, I understand what you're going through. Yeah, you know. I see what you see. I see what you mean. I can see where this would happen whatever it takes to get that information and to get that information and Miss admitted into court then I guess you're gonna have to do it because a lot of times like Lieutenant Brian said, there's no other way you can get (00:14:28) it while police must be sensitive to suspects in the course of their work Lieutenant. O'Brien says officers are now being trained to be much more aware of (00:14:35) victims. I think we teach them a lot more of a human awareness and compassion for the victim and dealing with the victim rather than nitty-gritty and even with the crime itself, which is important think we're doing that on all crimes and I think we're more concerned with people with the victims even like on Family Violence battered women Etc at one time 20 some years ago the police didn't he make reports on domestic assaults. So I think that there's a lot more awareness of the victim Than I Used To Me (00:15:03) Lieutenant Richard O'Brien has been a police officer for 25 years. He's a detective with the Minneapolis Police Department in the homicide division. When injuries occurred a police officers most come during the course of answering domestic abuse calls last year, for example, 85% of the injuries received by Eden Prairie police officers were the result of such calls and yet even as police officers look for more effective ways of protecting themselves during domestic calls. They're also getting more and more involved in helping people. (00:15:33) And if you want to come in here like this just blasting my house. You better have a good reason. Well, we are called we were asked to come in the house and I just trying to figure out what's what's going on here. I'll tell you what's wrong. She's been on my case since I came home. Can you guys (00:15:48) continue Jim Clark is doing a bit of role-playing here with several members of class number five part plays an Irate husband whose wife has called the police in a domestic abuse crisis other students fill in a spouse's officers and dispatchers. The role-playing is a little awkward students are somewhat embarrassed about performing but Clark who is an eight-year veteran with the Eden Prairie Police Department tells the class to pay. Tension because the next time they handle a domestic abuse call, it will be real it's been pretty much (00:16:17) proven by the statistics that cops get killed at domestics and you can't it's difficult to make cops Believers of that fact until the cop in the next city dies and then it isn't you that's getting killed. So I think the hardest thing is to drill in those very simple things on how to walk up to a house and things like that that are the things that are going to get them hurt in the future. If they don't follow those (00:16:38) Clark's been several intense hours with students telling them how to handle a domestic abuse call from the moment. They receive word from a police dispatcher what to look for how to walk up to the door how to assess the room for weapons. Is anybody on drugs or are there children in the room Clark says one of the hardest things to teach young officers is that force will not help an already violent situation Clark suggest to his students, for example that they walk into the room and introduce themselves by their first names speaking in a quiet voice to people who think that police are only there to either Arrest or hurt them Clark says you immediately get their attention and the upper hand. I think you've got to be sympathetic to what they're (00:17:17) going through. You have to understand that this probably didn't happen just now. It's been happening over a long period of time and you have to be willing to work with the people and make them understand that you want to be a help not that that you're there to throw somebody in jail. However is we talk that's an option but it's an option to get to a hopefully a peaceful result down the line somewhere (00:17:39) Clark sees police officers becoming more active in offering options to couples involved in domestic abuse. He says part of that is practical officers don't want to keep coming back to the same house over and over again, but Clark says police have also been instrumental in changing state law. So that more action can be taken to help resolve situations rather than just controlling them. For example officers must now advised victims of all their legal rights in a situation as well as offer information on local shelters for battered women what Clark tell students in just a few Ours is a lot to remember and the students in class number five have been absorbing information like this every day all day for the last eight weeks 22 year-old Dianne koffice of Roseville is one of those students. She thinks handling domestic abuse cases may be a little harder than handling some of the other crime she's learned about when it comes to domestics. I think his first thing a police officer forgets drops as well as Learners because when he walks up to the house, maybe three or four in the fifth time of the day the same domestic to get to a point where they're getting frustrated. They can't do anything and not all officers have answers to all these problems. Love them. There's never any answers and the frustration gets to a point where they forget everything. They learn call office and her colleague 21 year old Steve will conic of Coon Rapids will be graduating from the state's police skills training course in a little less than two weeks. Both of completed college education's and paid for the skills course on their own anticipating that they will be able to get jobs in police work. Sometime in the next six months. Oh conic agrees that he's had to work pretty fast and pretty hard to keep up but he's already developed a professional attitude about his chosen career. It's (00:19:20) going to be my job. So I have to take as much of what I can out of out of skills and and apply to my job. It's going to be my career. It's what I want. I'm going for (00:19:31) it. Oh Connick hopes to end up in the state patrol car office will be looking for a position with a Suburban Police Department in the metropolitan area once students graduate. They go through the anxious process of looking for work. This is the season so to speak for job openings in police work because it's the time of year when departments are revising and planning their budgets for next year many police hopefuls. Take a test that goes on file with a Minnesota Police recruitment system departments from all over the state then draw applicants from that system one officer that successfully completed the state's training course two years ago went on to take that test and now works in Cottage Grove. Check the PA. (00:20:18) This is the radar unit. This is the antenna (00:20:20) the day starts for officer Regina Lammers about 2:30 in the afternoon after a brief role call with Captain Jim Kinsey and several other officers. She goes out gets in her squad car and begins running through a routine check of equipment. You can (00:20:35) testify that you (00:20:38) the check includes tuning the cars radar should the officer ever have to testify in court Lammers has been one of 17 police officers in Cottage Grove for about a year and a half before that. She worked with the Department as a dispatch the 27 year old Lammers went through the state's police skills training course before hiring on with Cottage Grove. She was attracted to police work after working in the theater for many years. Lambert says one day. She was asked to do some role playing for police training programs and she got hooked. I can remember as a little (00:21:07) kid watching that cop car. Not only wishing. Well, I wish I was going with lights and Sirens, but I always want to (00:21:12) know what's going on Lammers day begins near the elementary school and Judge Grove. Some of the parents are concerned that their children are being harassed by older kids and Lammers is assigned to maintain a presence until most of the kids wander home. It also gives her an opportunity to pass out. The Department's football cards. They're somewhat like baseball cards, but they profile Minnesota Vikings instead and also include crime tips for the kids. Lamer says she likes this assignment because it gives her a chance to see kids who aren't in trouble. (00:21:55) Okay, (00:21:56) most of the officers day ends up being spent on the problems of children on this particular shift Lammers will end up answering a number of calls about kids shooting BB guns or getting into accidents while television portrays police work as continually exciting lammer says police work is usually pretty routine though. She admits it has its days and (00:22:15) when you receive a call on the radio, Once you're out on the street as you're going to that call, the things are going through your mind. You're thinking. Okay. What are the possible situations? I'm going to run into here. What are my dangers? What else should I be looking for as I get near the area that I'm going to all these things run through your mind. And so you're constantly refreshing yourself. You should be just help you be more alert and you're preparing (00:22:41) yourself. Hopefully the course of several hours Lammers patrols Cottage Grove streets gives directions answers calls, the dispatch sends her to talk with a bus driver who's mad about a motorcyclist running the stop arm and while out re-examining an accident scene officer Lammers comes upon a fresh incident (00:23:01) of my squad just a minute (00:23:03) a young man driving. The family car has apparently lost control of the vehicle on a rainy slippery dirt road and the car now rests with his front end wrapped around a telephone pole lamb her spends about 30 minutes at the scene calling for an NSP truck a tow truck and talking with the Property owner who just happens to drive by the young driver and his friends at nervously in the back of the police car out of the rain and while driving them home Lammers talks to the two boys. Take this as a (00:23:30) lesson. I also feel that your father's going to probably discipline you far better than I could (00:23:38) the officer says she pays particular attention to kids because she hopes to steer them away from any further trouble lammer says a good day for her means resolution of people's problems. If it call can be cleared up in one day of a case can be (00:23:51) closed. I feel good about that investigation is finished. We know who did what and the appropriate steps will be taken. It can make for (00:24:02) very tiring day. If just call after (00:24:05) call you are involved with all these people and they've got these heavy problems and it does affect you at the time because it makes it harder to deal with a call if everyone is totally emotionally (00:24:17) upset. Lammer says she likes working in a Suburban Police Department. She gets a little bit of everything in her job from the mundane to the exciting and yes, sometimes she gets scared (00:24:27) you get a call and there's an element of danger in it. And you just think oh gosh, why did I have to take this job in there someplace else? I could be right now. It it hit me when I first started and I'd get those calls fight call or an armed robbery call or something like that and it just put on my stomach would fall out and I'd really wish I wasn't here that happens only rarely now, so I don't know if I'm just More comfortable with myself. I'm (00:24:59) sure the day ends for Regina Lammers when she and other officers coming on for the evening shift our call to a possible robbery the crime occurs in a neighborhood that has been flagged for several days with robberies and one suspect is caught on the seen a shift that usually ends around 11 p.m. Goes until well after midnight with paperwork. Tomorrow. Lammers will be (00:25:20) back. (00:25:26) This is Debra Fisher reporting.