I knew before this project started that what I was asking of these folks to do was going to be a lot of added stress and pressure.

Anyone who has ever started any new job knows what it's like to have that new-person paranoia where you don't know anybody and you're not sure if you're doing anything right. Even if you are very proficient at your profession, there's still workplace culture stuff to learn when you start a new job. Maybe you're not sure where the extra pens are kept and who is allowed to drink the coffee in the break room. Is the boss going to flip out if you're 5 minutes late from lunch? Are you going to remember all the names of the 17 secretaries who look exactly alike? Starting a new job is at the top of the stress list next to getting married and moving to a new home.

Now imagine that someone is literally screaming in your face telling you that you clearly are not cut out for this, you're waking up at 4:30 in the morning and you're pushing your body harder than you probably ever had in your life in 110 degree heat.

Not bad enough? Well, do all of that with a reporter constantly pointing a video camera at you, then asking you how you feel about things, knowing that everything you say will be read very carefully by your new boss and co-workers, not mention the rest of the community.

The people who agreed to participate in this project took a big risk. I've spoken with them throughout this process about questions and concerns that have come up, but a couple of weeks ago I officially asked all of the new officers what it's been like participating in the Becoming A Cop series and what their thoughts are on it. I warned them that I may publish their answers, so while they may say something different to their families in their privacy of their own homes, here's what they had to say on the record.

Officer Jeremy Piper
"It kind of includes the community. The community knows what we go through now to become a police officer. They see the good things and the bad things," Piper said. "It's not just you put the badge on. You've actually earned it."

Officer Nicolas Gospich
"I think some of us know from being in the paper we got a little more attention when we weren't doing things right from instructors," Gospich said. He said that they will be constantly watched by the community once they are on the streets, so they should get used to it.  "I think it's helped us dealing with it a little more, dealing with the added pressure of constantly being watched."

Officer Jason Felgenhauer
"For the six that did this project, it put an extreme amount of pressure on us. The rest of the class didn't have to deal with anything like this," Felgenhauer said. "We were always under the microscope, but you're always going to be under the microscope for the rest of your career."

Officer Ryan Kroeker
"There's a lot of pressure that comes with it because the six of us are representing the 28 others in the academy, the training staff and a lot of officers as well," Kroeker said. He added that most of the cadets weren't really looking for a lot of recognition, but that it allowed the community to see what they went through.

Officer Felipe Juarez
"I don't think it's affected me at all. I'm just acting the way I would act if nobody was watching, so it really didn't change anything for me," Juarez said.

Officer Cathy Hinzo
"I kind of like it just because it's a record of it," Hinzo said. "But I've been more concerned with the academy itself."

The academy is over, but the project is not.

The new officers are doing mini-academy right now at the department. In fact, I spotted a couple when I stopped by for something else this afternoon. Once they're done with that, they'll be placed with training officers and I should start going on a ride-alongs with them by the early part of January.

The bulk of the project was always meant to take place during the academy, but there's lots of good stuff still to come. Unfortunately, it will probably be about two months before another story comes out in the paper.

Once I start doing my ride alongs, I'll make sure to post as much interesting stuff as I can as fast as I can. In the meantime, I'll be posting some academy rewinds. There's been stuff from the beginning I haven't had the time and space to write about, so I'll try to do that now.

So check the blog regularly and feel free to hassle me if I start slacking on posts.

-- CS

Here's the graduation story. Also, I made a slide show of nearly all of the photos taken over the academy, many of which sadly never made it to the paper. Check it out.

Print story - December 23

"I've enjoyed your posts re: police academy. I was wondering, what is covered in the academic portion, the penal code, english, spanish? I mean they have to study something. Right?"

Answer:
They do a ton of academic stuff. They've done laws of arrest, crimes against persons, investigating property crimes, sex crimes, crimes against children, use of force, search and seizure, presentation of evidence, death investigations, victimology and crisis intervention, missing persons, controlled substances, domestic violence, patrol techniques, handling disputes, crowd control, traffic enforcement, weapons violations and juvenile law, just to name a few.

Even on the days like when they got tear-gassed and tasered, there was lecture that accompanied that.

Each week they're tested on the subjects they learned that week. Last Thursday, they took the final exam. Academies across the state take the same POST-certified tests, and the BPD academy as a class received the 5th highest score statewide for the final, out of about 30 recent academies.

So why haven't I written more about the academics?

I try to make it out to the academy about once a week. Sometimes I can go more, some weeks I've had to skip entirely. Usually when I go out, I can only spend an hour or two there. Each week I look at the schedule and talk to the training officers to figure what would be the best two hours to spend out there.

While I have covered some of their academic work -- for example, their Spanish class -- often I don't choose to observe that when I'm making the decision. I need to go out to things that are going to show growth over the course of the academy. I need things that are interesting to watch on video for the multimedia portion of the project. I need things that are going to reveal the individual cadets' personalities. Watching them listen to lecture and take tests doesn't really fit any of those requirements.

Which has meant that I have missed a major portion of academy and something that is going to be hugely important once they're cops -- report writing. I have not gone to a single report writing class, even though they do it all the time.

Part of a cop's job is to make arrests, obviously. But an arrest is meaningless if the DA can't get a conviction. Since the trial can happen months or years after the initial arrest and investigation, well-written reports are crucial. But I'll be honest, as important as it is, I'm not a good enough writer to make a report writing class sound interesting to anyone but the most die-hard cop enthusiasts.

I did spend about four hours in their very last lecture session of the academy. While it really wasn't an academic class as they won't be tested on it, I will write about it in the next story, which will be coming out in a few days.

-- CS

After reading the paper copy, I found the text of the article on the LAPD's blog. Yep, they have their own blog. Doesn't seem to get a lot of comments though. The only recent posting that seemed to generate interest was about an officer who was arrested for assault under the color of authority. Check it out. But first, read this article:

A cop in pursuit of trust

This article was first originally published in the Los Angeles Times, Wednesday December 13, 2006 by Will Beall. WILL BEALL, author of the novel "L.A. Rex," is a Los Angeles police officer.

AN ANCESTOR of mine, for whom I am named, was the sheriff in Neshoba County, Miss., before the civil rights movement. It's haunting to see my name stamped into his old tin star. I know almost nothing about the man, but I'm fairly certain William Joshua Beall conceived of law enforcement very differently than I do.

I have spent most of my career with the LAPD in 77th Division — the heart of South Central — serving and protecting people whose parents and grandparents migrated here to escape places like Neshoba County.

77th Division occupies less than 12 square miles, roughly from Vernon Avenue south to Manchester Avenue and from Central Avenue west to Crenshaw Boulevard. About 175,000 people live in 77th, mostly Latinos and blacks. So far this year, we've had 69 murders.

Most of our murders are gang-flavored, but many are plain Cain — raw homicidal impulses unchecked by middle-class propriety, the unfocused rage of the desperate and downtrodden. A man murdered over a chicken coop. Another killed over a cold beer on a hot afternoon.

Most of the victims are black men and, as they aren't apple-cheeked cheerleaders or children, few of their deaths make the news. These men are buried in places like Inglewood Park Cemetery, their pictures silk-screened onto oversized T-shirts and draped over their orphaned toddlers.

Some shooting victims survive, but I wouldn't call them lucky. They slump in wheelchairs with atrophied muscles, their fingers curled and claw-like, still defiantly wearing those goofy, straight-billed, powder-blue Yankees caps, still scowling at me as I drive past. They're the paralyzed veterans of South Central's sectarian violence — gang feuds so ancient that their origins are lost even to the gangsters.

Black men have bled and died down here for generations. When you process crime scenes in 77th and collect the empty shell casings from the ground, sometimes you find older casings, tinged with rust — the leftovers from some earlier, unreported shooting. Tragedy heaped upon tragedy, death upon death, and the trail of blood stretches back further than most of us care to look.

Spend enough time in South Central and you make some unpleasant historical connections. You begin to see the body count not just as the work of Crips and Bloods but as the legacy of restrictive housing covenants and economic isolation. Believe me, this nation's history of racial oppression doesn't feel so abstract after a few autopsies.

I know a lot of black people still don't trust cops. Can't say I blame them. For generations, police were the street-level enforcers of segregation and miscegenation laws. We were the guys with the dogs and water hoses at Selma. Little wonder the relationship between the black community and law enforcement in this country remains badly broken.

Folks in South Central remain understandably wary of cops like me. I walk into their lives uninvited, at inopportune moments — a retail sales rep from the same corporation that brought them the Middle Passage, Jim Crow, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Some of them hate me on sight. Others want to trust me, but it's hard. It is the nature of policing to displease. This is inherently violative work. We're not firefighters, after all. We pull people over. We ask unpleasant questions. We arrested your nephew, and he swears he didn't do it.

Many people are content to let poor black men kill one another. Fortunately, the men and women I serve with are not among them. Our vigorous pursuit of black perpetrators is legendary; we're less famous for our corollary efforts on behalf of black victims. Officers work in 77th Division because they believe the powerless are worth protecting.

A recent article in The Times reported that the LAPD has fallen behind the Sheriff's Department in recruiting. The article blamed this hiring shortfall, in part, on minorities' lack of trust in the LAPD. Eulia Mae Love. Rodney King. Rampart. Rocked by scandal after racially-charged scandal, this department struggles to reinvent itself while under a federal consent decree. Meanwhile, another generation of dedicated officers nears retirement age.

So here's my totally unauthorized recruiting pitch: If you believe justice belongs to the pauper as well as the prince, if the life of the untouchable is as sacred to you as the life of the Brahmin, if you believe safety is a civil right owed both the gated community and the blighted one, then take the LAPD written exam. Hey, come work the south end. We're still fighting an uphill battle, and we could sure use the help.

Progress is slow, but it is happening. In my eight years, I've won a few people over. They rage to me about a videotaped use-of-force on the TV news, or some highprofile shooting, certain they know the latent sentiments behind the official explanations. "But you're one of the good ones," they tell me.

That's not a bad start, really, considering we're all not that far out of Neshoba County.

Today was the cadets' last real class day. They graduate next week and will spend the next few days in scenarios testing, but today was the last lecture session. I went to hear the last thing the department wants them to learn to before they put them on the street. It was an ethics discussion from Captain Bob Bivens, which I will write more about in the next story, coming out very soon.

During the course off the discussion, Bivens  brought up the Rodney King beating from over a decade ago. I imagine that incident looms in shadows of officers' minds as the worst it can possibly get for their profession the way the name Jayson Blair is instantly recognizable and horrifying among journalists. But I have to say, most cops qualify their statements by saying that they weren't there and they can't condemn the officers involved, and I have never met a reporter who isn't ready to say Blair is the rough equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer. (Well, maybe one, but that's another story.)

Anyway, Bivens asked something like why was that such a big deal or why was it so famous or what stood out about it or something to that effect. One of the cadets said that they only showed the officers beating King on TV, and didn't show what led up to it. Bivens pointed out to the cadet that he had used the word 'beating' and that's what the problem was. King had been beaten.

Later Bivens was talking about the problem of the code of silence in law enforcement. He pointed out that it is a problem in lots of professions. Certainly doctors cover for each other. So why are cops always criticized for it? Because they always show cops doing it on TV, one of the cadets said. Bivens said that while it's a problem in all professions, it has historically been rampant in law enforcement.

So what's up with these recruits? Where's all this anger for the media coming from? Did they always think like this? Have they developed this hatred through the course of this last five months? Is this a result of this class being more exposed to the media because of this project? In other words, should I be taking this disdain personally? Maybe it's just a cop thing to hate reporters because we scrutinize them? Or is it just representative of the way the country overall is feeling?

-- CS

Yesterday and today the class did what I believe will be pretty much their last defensive tactics requirement -- fighting the red man.

So named because of the red pads that he wears, the cadets are required to last two minutes in the ring with a padded officer.

And that's literally all they have to do, just last. They need to make it through two consecutive minutes and still have control of their gun and baton.

I'll write more about that in the next story, but for now here are a few pictures shot today by Felix Adamo.

The class is learning how to stop a car they believe is occupied by a felon or someone with a weapon. These pictures were shot last night by John Harte.

I didn't video every single cadet getting shocked by the Taser. I figured it would get repetitive.

But man has that video been popular in the newsroom. Every time I show it, people sitting at desks across the room run over to check it out. Even people who are usually completely uninterested in what I do have come over to request a viewing.

Maybe journalists are unnaturally entertained by watching cops get shocked over and over. But there has been demand for me to make all of the video I shot available.

So here's the Taser stuff, uncut and unedited. But be warned, that means two things. 1) This is a really long video. It's roughly 7:30 minutes, so it may take a while to download. 2) Some of the cadets said some naughty words that I didn't bleep on this version. If you are offended by naughty words, you should not watch this video.

-- CS

This was the question a friend posed to me recently. More of a challenge, actually.

She said the becoming a cop series had been nice and all, but when was I going to show how the cadets were going to go from being regular people to becoming jerks? When was I going to show how the department trains them to be mean and rude to everyone?

Geez. How do I even begin to answer a question that is so loaded with bias and personal opinion?

Well, one I can actually answer quickly. From what I've seen, they do not train them to be jerks. There is no 'Theories in Being Rude' course. They take every opportunity to train them to be professional and courteous.

But I suspect that there a lot of people out there thinking something along the same lines as my friend. Sure, these guys SEEM nice now, but wait until they get out on the streets and don't have a reporter watching them.

I intended to delve into this question in the Museum of Tolerance article. Since the cadets have never really been in the street interacting with public, I decided to ask the cops. I interviewed Lt. Cantrell, who heads up Internal Affairs, along with Training Officer Feola. I talked to Sgt. Mullins and Lt. Nuriddin about it too.

But when I went to write the story, it just wasn't working. I was trying to shove a square issue into a round article. To stay true to the project, I cut the interviews with Cantrell and Feola completely, and really limited the stuff from Mullins and Nuriddin.

But getting in the stuff there wasn't room for was the reason this blog was created. So I started to tackle the jerk question by trying to break down why my friend was asking it in the first place.

There are dozens of examples throughout history and in the news today of cops grossly misusing power. You don't have to look far. Pretty soon the people of Kern County are going to have decide if three sheriff's department detentions deputies murdered an inmate.

But was that why she was asking? Or was it because when she's had interactions with cops, she's found them to be curt and sort of bullies?

"As Americans we don't like to be told what to do, and that's what the police do," Sgt. Joe Mullins said.

Lt. Mike Cantrell agreed. The Internal Affairs department investigates all of the community's complaints about the BPD. In addition to the complaints that are potential violations of law, like excessive force, fabrication of evidence, filing a false report, illegal arrest and improper search, IA will investigate complaints of rudeness.

"When people come in contact with authority, through some type of detention... a lot of people take exception to that," Cantrell said.

Cantrell said that they will investigate those complaints, but often they are very difficult to prove or disprove.

"Maybe an officer was curt to them, didn't seem interested in what the citizen was reporting, was indifferent. It could be a facial expression," Cantrell said. "It's just a feeling the citizen had in the contact with the officer."

Regular citizens whose only contact with law enforcement is getting a traffic citation will often find that experience unfair and be unhappy with the officer.

"The proper venue for that is traffic court. That's a fair shake for citizens," Cantrell said.

How an officer interacts with someone, whether that person is a witness, suspect or a victim, is often determined by the behavior of the other person, not the cop, Officer Chris Feola said.

"People have their own bias, their own opinions, their own views of what police officers should be," Feola said. "The citizens you contact dictate how you react to them."

Historically the relationship between some police departments and some minority groups has been adversarial. Departments across the country have come under attack for their treatment of minorities at various times. Officers have often accused of racial profiling, or treating a minority person as a criminal simply because he is of a certain race.

As recently as 2003, the BPD faced accusations of racial profiling and excessive force, which were investigated by the Department of Justice. The allegations could not be proved.

While use-of-force and citizen complaint policy changes resulted from the investigation, the BPD is still struggling with an issue departments are facing nationwide. It is overwhelming white and male.

At the end of October, the BPD had 319 sworn officers, and 298 were male and 261 were white.

"We continually work to have an organization that's reflective of our community," said Lt. Hajir Nuriddin, who is a black woman.

Mullins said that there is no correlation between the race of an officer, the race of a suspect, and the likelihood that excessive force will be used.

"Race is very rarely an issue. It's usually a training issue, a leadership issue, a professional culture issue," Mullins said.

Nuriddin said the department has been working to recruit more women and minorities by establishing community outreach programs like the Police Activities League.

"The historical negative things that have happened in this profession, we still have some people of color who have not come into the department to see the changes that have been made," Nuriddin said. "It takes more than just a poster. It takes more than just a billboard."

-- CS

Ok, technically they ran in December, but they're about what the class did in November.

Print story - December 1
Print story - December 2

Also, another blogger wrote some very interesting thoughts on this month's installment on his blog. I'm not sure I agree with everything he says, but it's certainly something to think about. I hope he'll post on this blog, but in case he doesn't, check it out.