CRJ Internship With The Henagar Police Department And What I've Learned

On January 20th, 2021 I started my CRJ 280 Internship with the Henagar Police Department. Starting on that date with many more days to come I got the opportunity to lace up my own duty boots and experience what it's like to be both a dayshift and night shift police officer… and oh boy is it fun but it does get crazy! Throughout this paper I will be talking about what I got to experience and learn things such as how dayshift works compared to how different night shift is as well as the techniques officers use while on call. I was super grateful to have an opportunity like this!

On the first day of my internship I got to meet all the officers and dispatchers I would be talking to and working with on the current shift. Once I got the chance to meet and talk to everyone it was then time to get to work! The first thing dayshift officers do during the week is go watch and direct school zone traffic. Once watching and directing school traffic was over the officer and I swung by jacks to get some breakfast. Once we got breakfast it was time to patrol the roads! The officer and I would patrol the roads for hours by doing so we were showing officer presence in town. Our schedule would mainly be to patrol Henagar until either a call came in from dispatch or until it was time to help with a community event; either way I enjoyed it all! I remember the first call of the day, it was about lunch time and dispatch called us (the officer and I) with information about a woman at a $5 bargain center where a woman kept going in and out of consciousness while browsing the items. When we got to the $5 bargain center the store owner showed us the video she had taken of the female that dispatch had told us about after we watched the video we called ems to the location and pulled the woman to the side to talk to her so we could see if she was okay. The lady said she was okay and denied medical treatment from ems. Once both parties of the situation were handled the officer and told dispatch we were okay and that we were leaving the scene. After that call the officer and I got lunch then it was back on the road again. It was later in the day when we got a call from dispatch about a man at the gas station across from the police station. Dispatch advised us he was wiping his willy out in the parking lot in front of people and that he had urinated on himself. The officer and I pulled up to the scene and the man drove off, the officer and I drove after him where we would pull him over and find out that it was a 70 year old man that had been drunk driving but by the time we had pulled him over he was already near house so we called the chief and he said because of his age and condition he would be a liability issue for the city so it would be best to see that the old man goes home and that we tell him that if we see him again then we will take him to jail, after we seen that he went home we told dispatch we left the scene and continued patrolling. Once we left that call it was time for our shift to end and that it was now time for the shift exchange. During shift exchange I got to meet the nightshift dispatch and officers. Night shift had welcomed me with open arms and told me that I could ride with them whenever I wanted too!

On February 21st, 2021 I decided to change my riding schedule up. I had been riding all day with the day shift officer and when it was time for shift exchange night shift asked if I wanted to ride and I said yes but only for half a shift since I had been riding all day… boy is it different from dayshift. As soon as 1800 rolled around we got calls of shots being fired near an old abandoned movie theater as well as rumor of 100lbs of tannerite being blown up. When the night shift officer and I got to the old movie theater there were two lines of cars on the side of the road where the incident was at, all the cars happened to be all of the surrounding neighbors in the area and they were not happy with the group causing all the problems… once we desculated the situation with the help of the sheriff's office then we were able to get everyone's information so we could do the reports… so far we were an hour in and we already had 20+ reports to do. Once we got everyone's information, told everyone to go home we then cleared the scene and decided to have some fun and do some traffic stops. That night the night shift officer told me that he would train me like I was one of own officers and that he would teach me some techniques that they use on an everyday basis. At one traffic stop we pulled over a guy who was speeding and I watched how the officer would walk to and from the vehicle. The officer then pointed out that you never turn your body or head away from the vehicle even if that means walk backwards from the pulled over vehicle to your squad car because you don't want to have your head turned away from the vehicle you pulled over just incase they.