ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 17, 1995 TAG: 9512180113
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-18 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
Police Officer Connie Bishop has just finished an assignment when she hears the dispatcher calling another officer.
A teen-ager is fighting with her mother.
Bishop runs from the Police Department office to her car and heads to the scene. "I don't miss juvenile calls," she says. As an instructor in juvenile law at the New River Police Academy, Bishop has a special interest in youth.
It's a Saturday night in November, and Bishop has already spent two hours with a 17-year-old accused of shoplifting a tube of Clearasil from a department store. The boy, distraught over the potential consequences in the juvenile justice system and from his parents, is calmed by Bishop. She explains that the matter is serious, but will not follow him into adult life.
The boy's father has just picked him up at the police station when the call about the mother-daughter fight comes in. It will be a busy night, refereeing the troubled teen-ager's conflict and later investigating an allegation of sexual abuse of a child.
For 11 Christiansburg residents and three news reporters, the chance to ride with Bishop and other officers as part of the police department's first Citizen Police Academy offers an inside look at the complexity and stress of a police officer's job.
Since October, participants have met on Tuesday nights for 12 weeks of classroom instruction in search warrants, arrest procedures, defensive tactics and other police topics.
They ride with officers and share a dispatchers' busy night.
"What we're trying to do is give you all a full picture of law enforcement," Chief Ron Lemons tells the group.
But it's the hands-on involvement that class members like best - shooting on the firing range and using a video simulator at the New River Police Academy that trains officers whether to shoot in various situations.
From these exercises and other classes, participants learn the daily dangers officers face. Even those who considered themselves familiar with police operations say they are learning something.
The Rev. David Hurd, pastor of Christiansburg Wesleyan Church, says the simulator exercise helped him understand why an officer questioned him closely recently when Hurd was knocking on an elderly woman's door to check on her.
Apparently, a concerned neighbor had seen Hurd banging on the doors and windows and called police, suspecting someone was trying to break in.
"I see tonight ... they never know," Hurd says.
Class member Steve Knowles, an Appalachian Power Co. employee, has friends in law enforcement, but admits that he had no grasp of what the job entails.
"The thing that has really surprised me is the amount of money it takes to operate a police department, and the reports that they go through," Knowles says.
After riding with Sgt. Robert L. Smart, Knowles says he is surprised at "the strange things they call the police for." He noticed a lot of domestic calls - and repeat calls to the same places.
"It's just amazing how quiet it can be one minute, and the next minute it all breaks loose."
That's what attracts Donna Akers to her job as dispatcher.
She "wanted to be a cop since I was a little girl."
But after working with the town police since May 1994 and seeing the job up close, she's not sure if she wants to be an officer or not.
When officers are "off," they're really not. They may be in court or considering a case. "I can go home and leave it," she says, except for the major incidents.
Watching over three 911 telephone lines, regular phone lines, and as many as four radio frequencies isn't all there is to her job. There's a lot of paperwork and filing to keep up with. Akers grabs a pen to write down calls and dispatch and arrival times, then finds a few free minutes later in the shift to type everything up.
This night, the season's first significant snowfall is expected. Akers knows that means the likelihood of more wrecks, more emergencies.
Tonight, Akers has Lt. James Epperly and four road officers to keep up with. Sometimes there are as many as nine officers. It can get hectic.
The officers on the road "can't see what we're doing. We know what they're doing," but can't see them.
But Akers has a trained ear. She can carry on a conversation and keep her ear tuned on the police radio, interrupting softly to speak "10-4" into a radio, answering a call that an untrained ear wouldn't even hear.
"We have no contact with the outside world," Akers says as she opens a window to peer out for a weather check.
But she is the first contact people and officers have in a crisis.
On this night, calls include a child hit by a bicycle, a young man having chest pains at a gas station pay phone, a woman complaining that her estranged husband is at her house despite court orders, and a couple of calls from motorists who have locked their keys in their cars. (Christiansburg is one of the few departments that still unlock doors for forgetful motorists.)
Somewhere in between these calls, a burst water line and officers' own requests for license checks and other information, Akers finds time to eat a quick dinner she's brought from home.
She likes the stress and adrenaline rush and says she works well under pressure. "That's one good thing about this job, there's never a dull moment.
As the police academy class rolls towards a Dec. 12 graduation date, participants don't seem to want the course to end.
When Lemons asks students if they would mind extending the class a week to cover other information, they readily agree. The class also asks for a tour of the new state laboratory in Roanoke and for a chance to watch a polygraph demonstration - even if that means coming back next year.
They've bonded and developed a class voice.
On a frigid night at the shooting range, students warm themselves by floodlights, shouting encouragement as others fire weapons in pairs and then tote their targets back to examine their bullet holes.
Rick Basham, an experienced shooter who works at the Christiansburg National Guard Armory, says he's enjoyed the academy so much "I came out of hunting camp twice for this, and I was glad to do it."
Greta Weldon, a youth minister at the First Baptist Church in Radford, is struck by a demonstration by Terry Montgomery, assistant director of the New River Police Academy, with a real gun and a toy gun. Weldon and other classmates couldn't tell them apart until they held them.
"Police have to make a decision in a split second and their lives depend on it." says Weldon, who calls the situation "really frightening."
"Ten years ago, you would not have thought that a cop would have been killed in the line of duty" in Christiansburg, she says, referring to the death of Terry Griffith, who was killed in September 1994 while answering a shoplifting complaint. One night, the class meets his widow and children during a short ceremony to light a blue Christmas tree atop the Police Department, part of a national project honoring officers.
Lemons says he's "a little pleasantly surprised" by the class enthusiasm, but he expected a warm reception when he began planning the academy three years ago.
"Everything about it has pleased me to no end."
The department hopes to conduct three academies a year. The spring session already has a waiting list.
Many of the class members candidly tell Lemons "the eye-opening experience it has been for them, as far as the dangers and what we actually do - that it's not like TV."
It changes people's perceptions of why police perform their duties the way they do. Class members like Hurd have a new understanding of why the officer would be cautious with him "now that he knows ... how quick a situation can be not just dangerous but fatal," Lemons says.
"Sometimes we're perceived as being cold, crude, rude and actually we're not. We have to behave that way," the chief says.
Town residents who want to know more about the Citizen Police Academy may call 382-3131.
Just the facts
The Christiansburg Police Department:
Has 40 employees - 32 sworn officers and eight civilian employees (secretaries and dispatchers).
Has an annual operating budget of $1.67 million.
In 1994, the department:
Answered 23,743 calls for service.
Made 3,497 arrests.
Responded to 1,544 calls for first aid and 440 fire calls.
Assisted 2,602 motorists with car trouble, locked doors and the like.
Worked 1,049 traffic accidents.
LENGTH: Long : 170 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. 1. (no caption) ran on NRV-1. 2.by CNBNorma Carroll (right), a banker at Central Fidelity, takes aim at a
target at the Citizen Police Academy. 2. David Hurd (below), pastor
at Christiansburg Wesleyan Church, takes a close look at the target
from the firing range. 3. Police officer Steve Whitlock (above)
instructs Norma Carroll as she prepares to fire a shotgun. 4.
dispatcher Donna Akers (left) shows Steve Knowles the department's
teletype machine. color. 5. Walter Price, a Bell Atlantic worker,
rode with Officer Connie Bishop as part of the Citizen Police
Academy.