You have to be serious to want to go
into law enforcement. And this career
field is not for the faint of heart.
You have to have a little bit of a chip
on your shoulder, but you also have to be
compassionate towards your fellow
man. Coming back here gives me the
opportunity to a give back to the
college to help mold and educate our
future of law enforcement officers. And I
get to evaluate the cadets for future
hires for our agency. Kirtland prepared me by emulating the
work environment that I was going to end up working in. It's not just law, cut and dry,
black and white. Most rookies that go
into it we feel more that way to start
with. By having those instructors that
are currently working, have worked the
road for years, have that experience, they
can convey to you and get you to
understand right from the start that
most of it's going to be gray. The people are
gray. It's dealing with people ... you're
not dealing with computers, so taking
their life into consideration as far as
what you're going to do, what you're not
going to do, what the reactions
you're going to get from real people are.
And that's the cast of instructors that
Kirtland assembles really leads to that
because you can just put experts and
slots to give out information and give
out laws, well that's not going to make
the police officer what you want in your
community. I start talking with my
students right away in my basic level
courses about philosophies of policing
and what are the police, what do
they mean, really derive their power from,
and really boiling it right down to Sir
Robert Peel and the police are the
public and the public are the police. And
you're no one special. You're called out
to sort of the public and do the things
do for themselves, and you need to
approach your career in a way that
you're serving the public and doing what
you can to make the lives of the people
that you're serving better.
