Junior Year - Week Seven

Reverse arm-bar take downs and arm-bar take downs are both techniques that have to be practiced over and over again in order to make sure that when put in the situation the officer can quickly and efficiently take down the suspect. In our Criminal Justice class usually once a week we are reviewing and practicing our take down techniques. This week we had been placed in a different situation than we are used to.  We had to do take downs while the suspect was in a chair. The suspect was in the chair and we had to approach from the front and from the back of them. When approaching from the front you had to change the technique and do a reverse arm-bar take down.  I find it easier to do the reverse and approach from the front of the suspect which sometimes will be very useful if the suspect’s back is placed against an object not allowing the officer to come from behind them.

During one of the days this week we watched videos about the “History Detectives.” The detectives are not certified forensic investigators or crime scene investigators. That’s one of the reasons why this show is different than most of what the average person watches on TV. The history investigators are a group of people with varies different professions. They come together and use the history they know, the people they contact and the object that is given to them to try to uncover the case the citizen asks them to. The most interesting one to me was probably the shot gun that was “used” in the Valentines Day Massacre. The person came to one of the detectives and asked if they could figure out wither or not this shot gun had been used to kill people. The detectives had talked to ballistics investigators and they had tried to match the gun to the casings that had been shot from the gun. In the end they believe it could have been the gun that was used but they would not know for sure without the evidence from the crime scene which no longer existed.

We learned about the ethics of law enforcement officers.  This code had been created to show officers how they should act. It had been taken out of L.A., California in 1954.One of the reasons for it coming out of California would be the fact that the city of LA was ran by Mobsters. This code was to provide direction in questionable situations. We had watched a lot of videos about some officers that don’t have integrity at all. And some officers that do not follow this code of ethics for law enforcement.  The officer that had been stealing donuts out of the donut shop in Wooster, Ohio is an example of someone integrity. He had been fired and charged with a criminal crime of burglary. While the officer  that did not follow the code of ethics had been the one that used force and screamed at the 14 year old who was not following the no skateboard rule. The code of ethics has been modified for the more modern time.

Forensics this week has been kind of interesting this week also. We had a student that didn’t believe fingerprints could be lifted off a piece of notebook paper. So Mrs. Mauser had decided to show us that it is possible.  After that we started working on the process of DNA and taking notes so everyone can understand the process when we have to do it on our own.  Than we started working on the interactive forensics on the computer which was kind of cool because it allowed us to see a crime scene and the learn the proper way to collect evidence.

Junior Year - Week Eight

In the movie “Serpico” Frank Serpico was a NYPD officer that had faced serious corruption within the police department.  The officers within the police department had not followed the code of ethics at all. The other officers had taken money from suspects and they had talked to criminals. They were criminals themselves and Frank wanted to put an end to it. The officers in the movie ended up wanted to kill Frank because he was being the good cop. He ended up getting shot in the face because the officers did not help protect him when he went into a drug bust.

When being an officer most will encounter street fights between people and sometimes they cannot do anything but get someone out of the fight. That’s what we learned at the beginning of this week. We learned how to off balance someone and force them to move out of the area. The reason it works is because of the skeletal system and the way the bones and muscles are arranged. The officer may do this by pushing the hips outward forcing the person to leave the fight and go into the open area. Shoulders will work kind of the same way if the officer wants to continue by escorting the person. The shoulders get pushed up and the officer walks to make the person move out of the fight and with the officer. Usually the officer will have a partner or at least more than one officer with them.  This allows the officer to take people out of a situation without using extreme force.

In forensics Mr. Mauser had placed a dead chicken outside so the class could observe the chicken decomposing. The chicken had began to decompose and magets began to bury its way into it. Each day we had gone outside to look at the chicken and finally by like three weeks later you could just smell the awful smell at the begining of the trail. I had also been one of the people to take two magets off of the dead chicken in order to take samples and try to estimate the time that the chicken had been left outside. Different weather conditions had also changed the amount of time that it took the chicken to decompose. It was kind of cold and rainy for almost the whole time the chicken had been left outside.

Junior Year - Week Ten

Ethics of a police officer is a number on important key in law enforcement. The officers must follow a strict code about what they can and cannot do while also having the desecration in a lot of situation. They are able to decide who will and who won’t go to jail because of the crime they may have committed. But this desecration only follows up to a certain point and than they must make an arrest of the suspect.  These ethics are based off the peel principals and are a more modern version. Along with them comes the normative ethics. They are a set of questions that come up when considering how one should act out. They are Utilitarism, kantism,  egoism, intellectualism, and welfarism. The one that most relates to the job of law enforcement is kantism because it is doing the duty they have been given wither it is right or wrong. Unlike utilitarism which is the belief that everything is right as long as it makes the majority happy. These lead to discovering who the officers are that are follow the code of ethics and who might not necessary be following it. So in other words who are the good cops and the dirty cops.

Along with being given desecration though officers have a certain duty that they need to follow up to. As we talked about the Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor we talked about how the officer was not convicted of using excessive force while taking control of this situation although Graham believed officer Connor did. The case had been about the defendant Graham sewing for excessive force while the officer removed him from the car after suspecting Graham had committed a robbery and was under the influence of drugs. The defendant had entered a store after asking to be taken there by a friend because he was in the early stages of a diabetic shock. Once Graham noticed there were too many people in the store and he wouldn’t be able to get what he needed fast enough he left the store. All of this occurring in moments making the officer believe that Graham had committed a robbery.  Officer Connor used force because Graham wouldn’t comply with the officer’s demands because he had entered a diabetic shock. This Supreme Court case has given officers the power to use force in a reasonable matter without being held responsible for any injury that may occur. The objective Reasonableness standard had been created which states that if an “officer” of the same weight and size had been at the scene could they have used the same force at the same moment that the officer did in reality than it is not considered excessive force. This is one of the most important cases that have ever been presented.

As we talked about desecration and force today we worked on using the force. In the classroom we learned why open hand strikes are better than a punch or a closed hand strike. Mr. Lavery and student demonstrated the fighting or open hand closed hand strikes as if they were doing it as a sport and than the street or fighting way also. We practice the street and fighting way to allow us to see that an open hand strike is way more effective than a closed hand strike. We have more power behind our strikes if we are able to step into and put our body weight into it. These strikes are effective because you are not allowing the person to take control of the situation or allowing yourself to break any bones. While the fighter may not fight correctly they may break their wrist and that gives the officer the advantage.

Junior Year - Week Nine

This week we mostly worked out in the weight room for three days than we started with more take-downs and other ways of controlling people. We worked if someone was to grab you by the shirt or grab you how you can disrupt their chemical or thought process. The technique enables the arm from being brought up therefore they cannot hit the officer. The reason this works is because of where the officer is hitting the person. It is in a nerve around the spot were the shoulder and a little lower than the collar bone. Using this technique the officer than can move into a more complex take down in order to take complete control of the suspect. The reason the officer can think and react is because he or she doesn't focus on the arm that someone is grabbing the officer focuses on the arm that could potientally harm them. Than the opposite shoulder of the suspect is hit. That can force the suspect to turn his or her body allowing the officer to than get to the dead side or weapons off side.

We watched about the Dallas SWAT team which was actually very intresting. The Dallas SWAT team is all men, they are kind of older but not old men. It showed a couple different situations including bad ending ones. The first one was a drug bust which was sucessful on their part because they got the evidence and took people into custody. The other one was a not so successful one, the team had been shot at and the officers than had to take control. There was a negotiator who worked with the suspect that had locked himself in a hotel room and refused to come out. This ended with the suspect shooting himself in the head and later dying. That to me would be the hardest part of policing is watching someone die that you just spent four hours speaking to and calming down from the very upset state tha they were in. Also the movie had shown about the families of these officers on the SWAT team and it's hard on them as well as the officers putting their life on the line everyday, and that's not just SWAT that's all law enforcement officers. The families suffer from not seeing there children or wife or husband and the movie slowly depicted that.

For the past few weeks we have been going outside and looking at the decomposment of a chicken body in Forenics class. This is defnintly a very intresting thing to me because it's kind of what I want to do when I get older. I got to take samples of magets off of the decompsing chicken and take them back to lab. While we have been sort of talking about that and looking through the life stages of the magets we have also been looking at DNA and trying to isolate and identify which restriction enyzems will work with what. This is so intresting to me and I love learning about it.

Junior Year - Week Six

KANSAS CITY POLICE PREVENTIVE PATROL EXPERIMENT was an experiment to see if the public and citizens felt better and safer when a patrol car was driving through their development or down their streets. They had researchers and writers drive along with officers in a high crime rate area and record what they saw and experienced for one year. While they were out riding along with different officers in different areas they would randomly survey citizens off the street to see what they thought. Researchers had come back and reviewed all there data. In the end the only thing they had discovered was that the KANSAS CITY POLICE EXPERIMENT had not worked. When a citizen had seen more police cars patrolling they never felt safer, they feared that the crime rate was increasing.  The crime rate didn’t increase nor did it decrease it had just been a waste or resources for the police department. The tax dollars had been spent because some of the neighborhoods had said they wanted to see more police cars patrolling, when in reality it feared citizens more than calmed their feelings of crime.

PHILADELPHIA FOOT PATROL EXPERIMENT had occurred in Philadelphia and had happened after KANSAS CITY POLICE PREVENTIVE PATROL EXPERIMENT. In this experiment they had placed pairs of officers together in a target area. Along with the KANSAS CITY POLICE EXPERIMENT the officers were placed in high crime rate areas. These officers were on foot hence the name of the experiment and walked throughout their target areas, both shifts.  In the end of this experiment researchers had discovered that the officers were more approachable than the ones in police cars and less visible which is good and bad. But the experiment had worked increasingly better than the KANSAS CITY one.  The violent crime rate had decreased and the drug related arrest had increased. The officers saw where and when the drugs were being sold and to who. They patrolled and when an officer is walking around there are not going to be gang related fights or break ins. The patrolling actually worked in the high crime rate areas.

This week we got to take a field trip to the Olmsted Township Police Station, while on this visit we had the chance to ask officers and the lieutenant about the KANSAS CITY POLICE PREVENTIVE EXPERIMENT and the PHILADELPHIA FOOT PATROL EXPERIMENT. While at the police station we asked about the PHILADELPHIA FOOT PATROL EXPERIMENT and learned about that the lieutenant would like to use the foot patrol because he believes that the experiment is accurate and would actually help in the public.  While at the police station we learned about all the evidence and meet the chief of police and detectives.  Lieutenant Vanyo answered all the questions we had and allowed us to see everything that S.W.A.T would wear and weapons they would use.  We saw the dispatch center and the cruisers and I learned that the police department has a bicycle for police use and the officers need to take certification classes in order to patrol the neighborhoods.  The police department has a small station but a lot more stuff to deal with throughout the small community that I live than I expected.

When you have adrenaline running through your body it makes it slightly difficult to remember the training that we have had over the first six weeks of Criminal Justice.  Mr. Lavery allowed us to experience that. We were placed in the hallway while four students had stayed in the room.  The officers had or the students in the hallways had to do push ups and jog in place until their name was called. Once the students name was called the officer was placed in the room and had to do escort position without force and with little force. The next step was to do an arm-bar take down while a person was standing and with no resisting. The last step was the arm-bar take down while a person was sitting in a chair. While trying to do all of these it was slightly difficult because you have a reverse electrical stimulus which makes it hard for some to formulate a chemical stimulus because electrical over powers chemical. When it was all done the student realized that it is slightly hard to remember the English words that we have been speaking our whole life and the Spanish we just learned. It was a great experience for the student to have.

Junior Year- Week Five

                We started more take down techniques to prepare us for the real world of policing.  The arm bar take down is something we have reviewed and modified based on the situation.  Nerves are the primary focus for our take down techniques. When a nervous is hit it changes your thought process which than confuses the mind which results in the officer having control. We learned two place for nerves that will easily allow the officer to take control of the situation, one is the side of the leg, and the second is the side of the neck. To strike either of these places it takes some force but will never cause damage to the person forever.  We also learned how to take control from the wrist. The wrist is twisted and than pushed back towards the outside of the hand causing the person to lean forward which than allows the officer to take control. In the classroom notes were taken over World War II and the returning veterans. The Veterans had an effect on the policing community because they began to create police forces based on military tactics. They had also started joining police forces allow the cities departments to grow.

                In forensics we started learning about the spectcopy which is studying the density of unknown objects and what an object is based on the absorbance rate and other things involving light. But that unit won’t be started until later in the year. Before we are able to go into the lab we have to complete the lab safety test and must receive one hundred percent on it. This allows Mr. Mauser to know that everyone will be safe and will know what to do in the case of an emergency. Today we learned that we will start DNA and analysis of DNA. We learned about all the different tools and where everything is in lab. The fact that we are expected to be able to work alone like lab technicians is kind of exciting because it’s like real life experience.  Which is a great thing because forensics is the career I want to go into so being able to experience it in high school is something is a really cool because most kids in high school will never  experience this career field before college.

Junior Year - Week Four

  The begining of the fourth week we started working in the lab room. We went over things we learned from the weeks before like the arm bar take down and the proper escort position. After doing the escort position we learned how to take control of a person in order to place them under arrest and in handcuffs. We learned three different techniques, one was gripping the thumbs, another was gripping the fingers, another was going behind their back and pulling your arms behind them while pulling them closer so the officer can stay incontrol. The last technique will only work if the officer has a partner. We also learned how to do a take down if the perpertracter was in a car, bar or other place that you they were not standing.

  Modern policing was the next topic we covered for our history of policing notes. The topic that we covered that was a big thing was the battle between two police departments in New York City. There had been fighting and a lot of violence, no one cared about the city anymore both police departments wanted to be an army of the mayor. This occured in 1857 and had forced state to make new laws,  but both police departments kept patrolling the city until the Pendleton Act became into an effect. Something I learend that was a shock to me was that criminals, gang related criminals had been appointed by the mayor as law enforcement. Why would they appoint people to protect the city who had hurt people in the first place. The policing areas had been changed and organized so that northern cities had police departments and southern had like police regions that army had patrolled. Later the army had left and the patrolling was left to county police. The Criminals had changed so the policing had to change as well because if the police had been a step behind the criminals the chance of catching them would be very unlikely.

  This week we watched a video about guns. The video taught about how they classify different guns. Different police departments use different guns as their choice concealed weapon. Some use a pistol and some use a shotgun. The department that uses the shotgun talked about how even the sound the shotgun makes is intimidating for the person being arrested at the time. Each of the guns has markings on the inside of the gun which marks the bullet every time the gun is fired. These markings can be matched to the gun which than the police can find who the gun is registered to. Each marking is specific to the gun , making it easier to trace back to a model of a gun and using it as evidence to the jury. There are special officers and labs that run test and double check that the bullet and the gun match.

  In room 203 we worked with nerve or pressure points. If the criminal is resisting arrest we learn a couple of different ways to make them comply with the officer. If they are resisting arrest we can knee them in the side of the leg a couple inches above the knee. It strikes a nerve and weakens the body which makes it easier to use one of the take down techniques to get them on the ground. I also learned that everyone is made differently so one persons nerve may not be as close to the surface of your skin as another. Therefore you may have to strike a person more than once while trying to take them down to bring the nerve to the surface of the skin than hitting it again. Another way to make a person comply with the officer is to pop there shoulder. If you do this it's a warning that farther action may take place if they do not start to comply with the officer.

  During forensics this week we learned new things and got a hands on experience with certain things. We learned all the safety for the lab and what each number on the chemicals mean.If we can not pass the safety quiz we are not aloud to work in the lab because everything is very crucial to the safety of others in the lab. We learned that the fumes from one chemical can still react with another even if the other chemical is in a bottle or container. Like when the ethanol was made into a gas state and the plastic wrap was taken off of it the flame that was placed near it created a reaction in the air and made it catch on fire. The reaction was from the ethanol being oxidized which is a really bad thing when it comes to fire and chemicals. We watch CSI for two days because Mr. mauser's wife was having a baby but the point of watching CSI is to see the "effect" and than the real thing. It slowly puts us into our evidence bagging and tagging quarter and everything like that. But my favorite day so far was Friday, we go to turn pennies silver and than burn them into a gold coin if we wanted to. Everything in that lab has to do with chemical reactions that occur because of the solution the penny is placed in and than heated over.

Junior Year - Week Three

 Junior year started at the end of August which makes September 11th only a few weeks away. Going into the Criminal Justice field it sort of takes on a new meaning for that awful day. Ten years later we see what law enforcement officers saw and how they felt about this day. Ten years later makes everyone my age and a few years older see the real effects and how this changed America forever since we had been below the age of ten when this event occurred. It made me realize that America will be forever changed because of it and I realize how sad and horrific it really was now that I'm 16 year old. After we talked about this and explained if we remember what happened or where we were we went back to this history of policing. The american colonies was were we restarted our lesson of policing. The colonies were created by the british therefore britian law enforcement had been brought into america. Throughtout time the paid police forces started to show up in new cities. But the police forces weren't always protective and caring for the public as some are today. Example the NYPD cared more about themselves than the public they were suppose to be serving. That's why I think the fact that law enforcement has been changed makes it way better at protecting and serving our cities.

Junior Year - Week Two

History of Policing was the new topic for our second week of school. We learned that the first forms of policing had come from Europe and policing wasn't always the way it is today. Policing was the form of protection from harm, animals, and eventually people. The streets were walked to patrol for safety and to protect the goods that were being sent into the country. But most were not paid police officers or police forces. Some countries you could buy your position as an officer, lieutenant, or chief. Other places that were more uniform had created a police force that had certain procedures or rules they had to follow. In Britain and Ireland the "Peel Principals" had been created to maintain trust between people and officers. We learned all seven of the Peel Principals and why they had been important to the country and how some form of them still exists today. We learned how the history of all these different countries had traced back to America and how the American police forces derived from ancient times. Along with deriving from different countries we learned that people we encounter as officers may not always be American and be able to speak English. So we started learning Spanish commands that would help us communicate and command a person in need who did not speak English. But beyond the criminal justice part of school here we started our forensics class during our second week. We saw a lot of chemical reactions and began problem solving skills that involved water, air and pressure. In forensics I learned that it is not always about how you find evidence and how it's collected but how you present it in class, that's considered forensics. Week two was the week we learned that we have to take everything serious that we learn, and how to present yourself as an officer.

Junior Year - Week One

At the beginning of my junior year I started school at Polaris Career Center and my home school Olmsted Falls. It was a scary experience being 16 and having to start a new high school all over again, especially when I barely knew anyone in class with me. Our class started introducing everyone to each other and to the teacher, Mr. Lavery, also explaining what kinda of career we wanted to go into after high school and what we wanted to get out of the Criminal Justice program. We went over the things we would learn throughout our junior year and than had a lot of meetings to explain how this school was different from our home high school. Almost everyone knows each other to some extent in our classroom or at least what school is their home school. I've made new friends and that's a relief because I don't go into school everyday scared that I will have no one to talk to or be partners with for activities. The first two days of school overall were kinda of scary but every ones starting to become more familiar and more comfortable around each other.