Week 10--Recruit Fratto

Looking at the schedule, I thought the week is going to fly by, and it did! Almost everything was away from the Academy, and is some sort of practical lesson. 

Monday was a lecture on building searches, which was our introduction to our practical that we will be doing next week. This was interesting class because buildings are very dangerous and require a ton of attention to detail. I’m really excited to do the practical next week and test our knowledge from the lecture.

Tuesday was another day of arrest control and firearms. However, this week was a bit different than the last few. During arrest control we got away from handcuffing techniques and finally got into some strikes. It was a lot of fun to switch things up, and hit the bags a bit. During firearms this week we started our POST practice tests. A lot of us I think did really well as far as the shooting, but had that one stray bullet that cost us the entire qualifier. It is okay now because we have a few more weeks of practicing the POST test before we actually take it. However, I know a lot of us just want to put the whole thing together and get that perfect score.

On Wednesday we got to witness one of the best sights in Law Enforcement: the K-9s! These dogs are one of the best tools that Law Enforcement has, and they are absolutely amazing to watch. I would love to work with, and become a K-9 deputy. It is one of my career goals, and JeffCo has great opportunity within the department to work as a K-9 Deputy in the future.  

After the K-9s, we had our 2nd Fit Test, and everyone improved drastically. Some recruits cut their times in half! I could tell a huge difference in my test because coming from New York, not only was I sick but I wasn't used to the altitude. We were let out early Wednesday for Family Night. It was nice to meet everyone’s family and show mine where I come to work every day. We had guest speaker Dr. Jaime Brower, who let all our families know what to expect from us as recruits, and what changes they’re going to see over the next 22 weeks.

Thursday started with our ACT practical. A few weeks ago we had a Pedestrian Contacts practical, and I have to say I felt a lot more comfortable this time around. I found that my conversation and decisions became easier. Part of that is the knowledge I've obtained from that time, but also the mistakes that I learned from before. The instructors don’t expect us to be perfect, but they do expect us to learn from our mistakes and progressively get better, and I think we are doing that. 

In Firearms we got another shot at the POST test, and quite a lot of us improved, a few recruits even got a perfect score! After the POST test we had a friendly recruit vs. recruit competition. It was a ton of fun cheering on, and trying to talk “trash” to our opponents to get the upper hand to win.  In the finals, it was quite funny that one of the recruits turned around to look at his trash talkers, and turned off his earphones so that he couldn't hear them!


Friday ended with Major Crimes classes. All of these classes were previously covered in the criminal code earlier. Now we got some case law, and real life examples to tie up all the loose ends. Oh yeah by the way, we didn't have a test for the first week! Which, by the way, made me feel so odd because I had a little more time to do things than usual. It also made me feel like I was forgetting something. I guess we will find out for next week’s test. 

Well this week ends the first half of the Academy; Monday is officially the half-way point. I feel like we just started, and now it’s half-way over. I’m excited to finish out strong, and get going on my career with JeffCo!

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