Week 10, 11, 12

WOW, sorry for the long delay in the update, I will skip the job update because if you read the last update you have seen that I will be working in the OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK!!

So Week 10 started with the O.C Spray (pepper spray), in short it hurts….ALOT!!! We were sprayed in the mouth and eyes and had to defend ourselves against a suspect for a timed minute. I was actually sprayed by 2 people at the same time. I had to try and hold one of my eyes open just to be able to see in glimpses of the suspect. I got some great shots in though, a front kick that backed him up and then I attacked. It is very painful and hard to breath with it in your lungs. Your nose and mouth leaks like a bad faucet snotty gooey substances. Then you had to unlock your patrol vehicle and get inside and make a calm dispatch for medic and back-up. Let me tell you that was one of the longest few minutes of my life and it continued into the second day. We had firemen and nurses on scene to take care of us. There is no quick solve to a oleoresin capsicum. (OC Spray) Any contact area of the skin turned bright red like a sun burn and hurt long one as well. My right eye was still watering the next day. Even talking about it now makes it water a little, but that is mental. Those next 2 days I washed my face maybe 100 or more times!!

We did some Search and Rescue drills. We got to see our King County Police helicopter fly into the school land and tell us about their job. That was pretty cool. Good advice is not to run up-hill when exiting a helicopter.

The next day we got to do some simunitions where we were shot at with tiny paintball like capsules that are smaller and move faster, so they sting more too. I was fortunate to not get shot!! We were put in scenarios to try to deflate escalated situations that involved armed suspects.

Finally that week we learned Collision Investigation. Measuring skid marks, determining speed and re-creating the accident. I hope the drawing I made would make the engineers in the family happy.

WEEK 11
This week turned into a half week, so I was able to stay home Monday. The Emergency Vehicle Obstacle Course was a blast. Driving through cones over cones and hopefully between cones at a high speed in a Crown Victoria (Cop Car) was a adrenaline rush. We were taking the class up at the Bellingham Airport on a landing strip. There were two main courses. A forward course that took a little over 2 and a half minutes and a backwards course that took around 2 minutes. The forward course had high speed corners, quick lane changes, last second decision making turns, long fast straight-aways, swerving you know all the fun stuff and all surrounded by accurately measured cones. We needed to passing turns in 4 trys. Later we followed it by a top-gun run. Where you drove the course as fast as you could but as soon as you touched one cone you were done. The object is for the fastest perfect run. Everyone only got one try. We had 13 of us in our class and 7 of us had a perfect run. I was the top-gun for our half with a time of 2:35, I was pretty stoked about that. The other classes top-gun had a 2:34 (Oh dang). In the backwards course we needed to run a perfect course twice in a row under a certain time limit, So we couldn’t tap one cone. So 2 minutes driving backwards, swerving, parallel parking, a lot more swerving between tight spaces. During top gun I believe 6 of us had perfect runs. Ernie (my buddy from the Hoh tribe) had an amazing time of 1:45. There might have been 1 or 2 runs that were under 2 minutes but barely. My time was 2:01. We also got to do the course at night with the lights going. The first run we did it quickly just to prove we can see just as good in the dark, the second time could have been called a time to see how many cones you could take-out. The most exciting was doing persuit of the instructors in another cop car. We got to chase him around in whatever pattern direction he wanted to go, he did not follow the course and did take it off into the grass some as well. We chased him down for 5 minutes straight while maintaining calm contact with dispatch.

I don’t care how uncomfortable you are as a driver, if you got to take this course you would of loved it. We had a few uncomfortable cadets that were having a great time by day 3!

WEEK 12
Field sobriety testing was cool. I look forward to trying it on some of you!! Radar and Lidar was interesting but not too much you can write on that class. Basically it tells you the speed the vehicle is going. The other class we had was Rifle training. These guns are cool and accurate and they have way more power than my beebee/pellot gun.

So that is pretty much it for the last 3 weeks, last week and this week coming up I will write next weekend. I only have 2 weeks left! Tomorrow, I have my physical fitness test, it’s one of the last big tests left, you need to pass all categories or you do not get certified! I feel I am prepared and ready, tomorrow I will know for sure!

God Bless All and thank you for being part of this journey with me!!