Junior Year- Week of Spring Break

This was one of the best spring breaks I've had, my family went to Kissimmee, Florida. The only down side of our vacation was that we drove, it was 18 hours to the house we rented and it seemed like it took forever. I was so sick of sitting in the car, because we split up the driving into two days so we spent like nine hours in the car each day. But when we got there it was definitely worth it our house was so big and the weather was beautiful then entire week we were there. Driving home on the other hand was awful it seemed like it took 600 hours instead of 18.

While we were there we did a lot of things, everyday was super busy and we had so much fun. On Monday we went to a beach, the same beach I went to last summer with my best friend’s family, I got extremely sunburnt and thought I was going to die, it was awful.  Actually my whole family had gotten sunburnt so when we were sitting outside on the patio we were all freezing even though it was like 70 degrees, we had blankets on and hoodies with sweatpants, it was kind of funny. But the beach had been fun we walked on the beach and collected seashells. We laid out almost the whole day. But the bad thing was the closest beach to our house was an hour away so it had been more time in the car.

Tuesday and Friday we went shopping and laid out by the pool it was not exactly an exciting time but I had fun shopping for my boyfriend’s family and best friend. We laid out by the pool and tanned more which probably was not a good idea because I got even more sunburnt and that was not good, because my skin was starting to blister. Friday we went shopping for six hours and it was a lot of fun because I didn’t have to spend my money, which was a really fun time.

Junior Year- Week Twenty-Seven

     This week was basically focused on a new take down technique that may be extremely effective when someone turns into you from an escort position. When they turn to you and swing at you, you have to be able to take control of the situation and remain in a positive time frame or else your not going to be able to win this fight. Criminals will often turn away from an escort position because the officer isn't technically restraining them or arresting them therefore they feel they can easily get out of it.  But a train officer would stay in positive time frame and be able to remain in control of the suspect.
   We had practiced and practiced more Spanish command vocabulary. Spanish Command vocab is so us as American officers who have spoken English our whole lives have some way to communicate with someone from another country or maybe an illegal immigrant. We would rather talk to them than having to use force to make them understand. Since Spanish is the second language in American it's going to be extremely useful on the streets. Since it's the second language there are a lot more Spanish speaking Americans in the united states than most believe. The words we are learning and practicing are words and are from a program that had been designed to teach the military Spanish so they could communicate when they were placed in foreign countries. In the end it's going to be an extreme advantage to know and may give me the job over someone else.
   Since tomorrow is St.Patrick's day and there is going to be a lot of alcohol consumption throughout America. Our forensics class had started the section on Serology, which is the study of bodily fluids, blood,urine, semen or saliva. It's the study of blood alcohol levels in these fluids, which is kind of the reasoning behind the breathalyzer testing. We learned that silica beads or silica gel is what can show the amount of alcohol in a persons breath therefore before breathalyzers had been created they had silica beads that were placed in a tube and a suspect intoxicated person must blow into this tube. Well the amount of color change that had taken place had shown how intoxicated someone had been. The silica beads mixed with alcohol have a property change that takes place. It's mostly in the color of the beads.
   Today we had been tested on how well we could do physical things and speak a foreign language. It's alot harder than someone thinks. We train in the techniques and everything but when we are speaking were speaking English than suddenly we have to take somethings were trained on start speaking Spanish to someone. We were also tested on all the words on our vocab list. The test wasn't extremely difficult because it had been the first test we had taken on it therefore Mr.Lavery knows that it's new and kind of hard to do since it's not our native language. We will be tested on it again with more Spanish commands.

Junior Year- Week Twenty-Four

Our lessons in both forensics and criminal justice are kind of the same things. We are learning about crime scenes and how to handle and secure them and make sure that we are observing everything. For forensics we had done mock crime scenes, we were placed in groups and gotten our parts for the scene we had been given to act out. After that we had made questions, rather obvious questions that almost everyone should be able answer after have seen the scene. We than acted ours out and discovered that its really hard to recall even some of the most simplistic things when a crime is being committed. Some of us couldn’t even remember the name of the man involved in the robbery or what the name of the suspect was. My group couldn’t figure out what the victims had dropped when they were running away. So when the crime is being committed it’s hard to remember and see what is really happening the first time that’s why witnesses and cameras are so important because what the witness saw may not be actually accurate.

In criminal justice we had been lectured about the importance of making sure we had secured the crime scene and collect all the possible evidence even if it doesn’t really seem that important to the case. Every detail of the crime scene is extremely important in catching the suspect. Mr. Lavery gave us some examples like a gum wrapper at a scene of a murder in a house, doesn’t exactly seem to important but the killer could had touched that wrapper when he had put the gum in his mouth just minutes before murdering the victim. So small things can definitely g a long way when it comes to evidence and you only have one chance to collect it all.

As well as secure the scene is important you must be trained to be able to handle if someone does attack you when the house wasn’t cleared properly. So we worked in 203, our lab, in order to better prepare for working on the streets. We learned outer wrist locks and variations of the wrist lock. We also learned finger locks and once put things together realized that both can be very effective when you are dealing with someone trying to put you into a negative time frame. Negative time frame is basically going to result in the officer being killed. The suspect should never have the ultimate control over the officer. In order to remain in control the officer must continue to stay in a positive time frame

"Shoot / Don't Shoot" Junior Year

Officers are faced with different situations everyday, each of these situations may result in the officers death. So how do you protect yourself from being killed each day you put on the uniform and go to work? How do you ensure your family that you will be home for dinner? The simple answer is you don't you never know what the day will hold when you leave in your patrol car all you can do it train for these situations. But you cannot train enough for actions of criminals. Criminals will shoot just to kill you and than move on with the rest of the life wither it be killing, serial killers, or thieves it doesn't matter they will kill you.

Working through one of the biggest challenges I have faced in school I had the choice to shoot or not to shoot when a situation became deadly. I didn't really know that this was going to be so hard for me to work through and to watch and become aware but it was. It had challenged all of my thoughts and knowledge about the legal things we have learned and about the situations and the angles and movements of a suspect. Wither of not if I was going to be killed was the biggest challenge and the scariest thing I have ever mentally been put through. And I was standing in a classroom with a rubber gun and starring at a computer screen. How will I react if I'm actually put in a building with someone who basically is out to kill me?

The situations they had put us in had been one with a deaf person coming closer and closer without showing his one hand. But the officer yelling at him to stop and not move had not known that he was deaf and the man who was deaf and coming closer had just been trying to show him his wallet that identified him as being disabled. It obviously had been a no shoot situation because he was an innocent man. Another one had been a possible child molester who was in the park around children. He shot at the officer taking the call and than took off running. The officer had the decision to shoot or not shoot. The surrounding and the children playing had made this a no shoot situation. There was a house in the background with its light on indication that there was a person inside. The suspect had ran behind the bushes but a child had ran out from them at the time the officer approached and there were children all throughout the park. The officer had not shot because he could have killed the children or that child coming from the bushes. The students in the classroom had shot both the deaf man and the child and shot toward the suspect when he went through the children playing in the field.

Two individual citizens were put into the same situation as I was but they were actually with the officers in a police department with a remotely similar gun to the ones used in the line of duty. The citizens had both had an opinion that the officers working in their city should not be aloud to use the kind of force they use when they are placed in situation like the ones they later experience. Each of these people than took the test and shot when they shouldn't have and didn't shoot when they should have. They proven that looking at the screen and taking this test is difficult for the average person along with an officer whose trained. Both of these citizens had also shot the deaf man and had shot the innocent child running from the bushes.

This simulation of the real life events that officers may face everyday or may face once a year was scary but in a way made me want to challenge myself to the struggles of police work, to allow myself to train and help the people around me. I had been one of those students who shot the deaf person.When he had been coming closer to me I saw that his hand had not been visible and that he may be holding a gun. He had come closer and closer he had not been stopping and he could have killed me, I shot him when I saw him pull out an unknown object from his back pocket. I shot him twice. He was not a threat to my life at all  he had been deaf, he never even knew what i was saying. That put me into a strange feeling it had been like oh my gosh what did I do. I had not been able to wrap my head around the fact that I would have just killed an innocent person. Would you have shot ?

Junior Year - Week Twenty One

We worked on drug searchs in cars. We were split into two different teams these teams were considered and investigation team. We had to search cars for drugs they had been pretty diffcult, our teacher had made it very realistical for the teams. He told us we had to think like a dealer hidding drugs which is really true because an investigator has to think like the suspect in order to actually find what they are looking for. My team had not found all the drugs we found two of the hardest drugs the last one had been shoved behind the ashtray spot on the back door. We had switched cars with the other teams, we found all three drugs in there car but so had they. But when the had searched our car they had only found the one we had missed. We overall did a good job searching the cars.

We had to analyse this evidence to determind what kind of drugs they were that we had found in the cars. The teams worked together  and we had to use all the things we had learned to run test on our evidence to figure out what kind of drugs the suspect had been carrying. If the amount was too high for personal use than we can assume they had been trafficing the drugs. Our team had figured out two of the drugs but not the last one

Junior Year - Week Seventeen

Tactical Training is something that is huge for the criminal justice classes to learn and to practice over and over again. We must learn to protect ourselves in times of need and when to use certain force while working in the field. Last Friday we worked on our leg sweep and had worked with different genders and different body types. Mr. Lavery had explained that we are not always going to be faced with someone who is the same gender of us and the same weight of us. So we could be faced with someone who is high on something and has an adrenaline dump and may have way more strength than us and we may have to take them down using a different take down technique.

Mass Spectrophotometry was what we are working on for forensics. It's a machine that separates the two atoms based on their masses. Spectrophotometry is something that helps forensics scientist classify drugs or determined what an unknown substance or powder is. The mass one has more parts than the one that uses light waves. The mass spectrophotometer uses energy to break bonds from the electrons so that they can be moved throughout the machine and hit the detector. The detector allows the forensic scientist to take the test results and analyse it to determine what the substance is.

When Mr. Lavery had been absent we had Mr. C and we worked on our Spanish commands. We went into the lab room and worked with varies partners to place them under arrest using all Spanish. We had also worked out and had learned how to work out our core by just sitting and lifting your legs up and down using balance. When we came back to the room we had watched Dallas swat and learned more about how the swat team works. They have briefing time and than they have to carefully plan how they will make entry almost keeping in mind that the circumstances that they have thought of during briefing may change. He or she may not be home or they may be armed so they have to be prepared for all situations.

The unit that we are on is police patrol, we have been taking notes on this for a couple days now. The topic of police patrolling has not changed a lot throughout time. Just the technology has changed and dramatically advanced over the last thirty years. As we took notes it made me realize that a lot of different calls are put into a different department. But an emergency is different to everyone so one that may be an injury is important for everyone but an animal in the backyard may not be real risk or real emergency so it gets transferred to another agency. When the agency may be closed like animal control the officer will have to take the call if he or she is on patrol.

Food Dispute Led to Ohio Murder-Suicide-
The husband of a woman dying of cancer had committed murder than killed himself once everything was said and done. The husband had peeled an orange for his wife and before he had the chance to give it to her someone else had come and given her tea and toast. He had been really upset about this and left the living room to go get a gun. He than decided to shot everyone in the house except the son who had children and the woman dying, his wife. This man, her husband, he been in jail for over 10 years for the murder of another  man and when he had been released from jail he changed his name and moved.
This article definitely grasped my attention because it is such a little thing, but sometimes they can be the last straw. He may have had a lot of anger held inside of him and the tea and toast was the last thing he could deal with. But killing everyone and than killing yourself seems insane to me and makes me wonder if that man would have always been crazy and would have become a serial killer if he continued his life after the death of some many people his wife loved.
http://www.officer.com/news/10612050/food-dispute-led-to-ohio-murder-suicide?page=2