Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 19, 1992 TAG: 9201190117
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
RECRUITS HANGING TOGETHER
Scrambling up a 15-foot rope was no problem for Michael Hodges.But after struggling through the first written examination at the Roanoke Police Academy, Hodges began to wonder about making it through 14 weeks of training.
On the night before the next test, a group of Hodges' fellow police recruits showed up at his doorstep. They spent the evening studying together, quizzing each other on search-and-seizure laws and rules of evidence.
The next day, Hodges made a 94 on the test.
"At first, I was beginning to wonder if anybody really cared," said Hodges, who came from Florida to become a member of the most racially mixed police academy in Roanoke history.
Although community pressure for more black police officers is what brought Hodges and 13 other recruits together, they soon became bound by something more important.
"The fact that we're black or white isn't really the issue," Hodges said. "We just pull together and help each other out."
As the recruits enter the final weeks of a three-month training program, they have learned that sticking together is one of the fundamental lessons of becoming a cop.
"There have been a lot of people who haven't made it through this academy," recruit Barry Meek said. "They don't just run people through a mill here and put them out on the street."
"I'm a college graduate, and I can say that scholastically it's tough. And it's physically tough; we have some ex-military guys who can tell you that."
In addition to going through daily sessions of physical training, the recruits will spend 450 hours in the classroom - studying a variety of subjects at a sometimes dizzying pace.
"It's just one topic right after the other," Meek said. "We don't have the opportunity to practically apply what we learned last week before we're learning something new this week." `It's real'
On the morning of Jan. 8, the recruits piled into a bus that would take them to the site of an unexpected lesson.
"They'll probably learn as much today as they have at any other time," Police Academy Lt. William L. Althoff said.
A few weeks earlier, Patrolman Fred Robinson had spent a week with the recruits at the shooting range, teaching a firearms course. "He told us, `I'm teaching you things out here to keep you alive,' " Hodges remembered.
On this day, Robinson was to be buried at a funeral attended by 800 police officers.
Speeding to answer a burglar alarm several days earlier, the 20-year police veteran was killed when his patrol car hit another car, then plowed into a building on Williamson Road.
From day one at the academy, instructors have told recruits again and again of the dangers of being a police officer. On this day, it became more than just a part of the curriculum.
"You can't write it down, it's not in the lesson plan," Hodges said. "It's real."
It's a love-or-hate job
Scanning the faces of police recruits seated in the classroom, Detective Keith Sidwell made a prediction.
Some of you, he said, may not be cops for long.
"This is a love-or-hate job," he said. "There is no middle of the road. If you love it, you stay. If you can't hack it, you'll be out of here within five years."
Sidwell's lecture was on how to cope with police stress, the "silent killer" that is often at the root of other, more visible problems that plague police officers: alcoholism, divorce, burnout and boredom that can instantly turn to chaos.
"It's sometimes said that a nine-hour shift on this job is eight hours and 55 minutes of sheer boredom and five minutes of sheer terror," Sidwell said.
The secret to keeping your sanity is not to keep your emotions bottled up inside, he said. Talk things out with fellow police officers who share the same problems.
"Keep in mind, you picked a difficult profession," Sidwell said. "You will see the 5 percent of life that the rest of the citizens of Roanoke will never see, nor do they want to.
"That's why they pay you to deal with it."
The toughest task
Picture this, the academy was told:
Its brakes failing, a cement truck slams into the back of a Roanoke school bus, seriously injuring several students and killing a 16-year-old girl.
Maj. Don Shields then glanced at a class roster and picked out two names at random. "Merchant and Meek," he said.
As Lloyd Merchant and Meek stood before the class, Shields gave them their orders: Inform Mr. and Mrs. Wilson that their 16-year-old daughter is dead.
"It's the hardest chore that you'll ever be asked to perform," Shields said as he began his lesson on death notification.
Shields then took on the role of Mr. Wilson, with a secretary playing his wife, as they waited for a knock on the door.
As police officers often are, Merchant and Meek were hit with the unexpected. It turned out that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were unable to hear or speak, roles that they played convincingly as they shrugged their shoulders at questions and muttered incoherently.
Forced to improvise, Meek and Merchant wrote out their message on a piece of paper. Although Shields' performance drew some snickers from the class, he told them afterward that such a situation really happened.
When telling someone that their loved one is dead, it's best to avoid the by-the-book tactics of a stone-faced cop, Shields said.
"Being in control all the time is an asset to our jobs. But it can be a liability when you're dealing with emotions during a death notification," he said. "Don't ever let your professionalism crowd out your compassion."
Butcher knife, crowbar
A tape measure in his hand, evidence technician David Sublett stood over the corpse.
Actually, it was a plastic dummy instead of a body, but it did just as well for Sublett's purpose of teaching how to sketch a crime scene.
"While you're doing this, you don't want to step on your evidence and knock it out of line," he warned as he gingerly measured the distance from the wall to the dummy's head.
Other items scattered through the police academy library were noted on the sketch: a butcher knife next to the victim's outstretched hand, a revolver on the table, an empty shell casing lying on the floor, and a crowbar next to a forced-open window.
All the items are important pieces of evidence, Sublett said, and it's crucial that the first officers on the scene not disturb them.
Each recruit was required to draw a detailed sketch of the crime scene - a document that in real life would be scrutinized by lawyers when the case reached a courtroom.
But for now, the sketches will be graded as yet another one of the recruits' many tests.
Already, some the recruits are becoming restless, eager to take all they have learned in the classroom and start applying it to on-the-street scenarios.
"The tests are somewhat superficial," Meek said. "It's what you do to get through the academy, but getting a 100 on a test is not a true measure of your potential as a police officer, once you get out on the street."
Two-thirds done
Each Friday at 7:45 a.m., the recruits line up for inspection.
On this particular morning, Lt. Althoff noted that the class had made it two-thirds of the way to a Feb. 7 graduation ceremony.
"Anybody feel like quitting?" Althoff asked.
No one answered at first, uncertain as to whether speaking out would constitute a break in ranks.
"I believe the correct response to that would be: `No sir,' " Althoff said.
In unison, the class responded: "NO SIR!"