THE MAKING OF A COP

[Music] the term abuse of authority unnecessary use of force and police brutality have become TurnKey phrases in our vocabulary in the last few years our cities have been shaken by violence agitators in some minority groups have cried that police brutality was the main cause for recent civil disorders whatever their motives they're beginning to break down our police Effectiveness officers today are literally handcuffed by the recent Court decisions favoring alleged violations of Rights they've been a continuing Pond during the political chess games in order for candidates to win votes and we have supported all these moves but now we're beginning to see the results the heart of law enforcement the patrolman is harder to recruit now more than ever and turnover within the Departments is at an all-time high 20% [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] despite the restrictions and allegations against the cop some young men from our cross quilted section of the country want to belong why the hours are long the pay is little and their rewards are little more than criticism 22-year-old Preston Chambers recently got out of the Navy and like many fellow veterans was at first confused by what his goal in life was he had several jobs in just as many months before deciding to be a cop I just I got out of service in April and I've had several jobs just looking for satisfaction in my job just looking for something that would leave me with a satisfied feeling of of some kind of accomplishment when I went home at night David Robertson another Vietnam veteran looks at life a little more cautiously but is a little more philosophical about his fears I guess as you get more into it you kind of shove these things aside but now I I hesitate because here I am a rookie I'm not really trained or specialized in the in this field of policing yet what these two boys have yet to learn is Limitless what they have learned is invaluable one of the first men Preston and Dave meet during their week of indoctrination is Officer eh Lions a veteran of 21 years on the force he works the day watch with a crime prevention Bureau an experimental liaison Department between people and police Lions beat is the high crime areas in areas such as this where children play in the streets for lack of a proper playground every one of these young lives in a potential breeding ground for a life of crime Lions knows this and understands it he lives with their problems and is aware of their fears one day his role might be that of a public protector he don't have anywhere to stay she didn't then he burn her house up who saw him do it anybody see him do it yeah I see we seen him did I saw him do yeah the night we we we had been off to the club and when we come in he was up there her house and I told her I saide don't go up there she said well I got to have somewhere with my children stay her children children with upstairs and I said don't go up there and we went up there in the yard and he had the door closed my boyfriend want to go in the house more often than not these citizens have no idea of what their rights to protection are and it's Lion's duty to help them this is a job we'll sign to do to Aid these people in any respect help them obtain warrants and help them understand what their problems are if they run into our stickers down there by the we supposed to assist them and advise them you go so far as to take them down there in these hardship Cas this is a hardship Cas there's a mother here with two or three children don't where to stay house Mone she goes down there try to attain a war don't know how to express so we go down there with them and explain the situation to them and obain a warrant for he might be a guidance counselor now when your mother leave you at home and some strange person come to your home home and knock on the door you shouldn't let a stranger into your house or meet him there many times officer Lion's role as a cop is to listen to problems of neighborhood groups such as this one regarding police protection what about how was this man killed the shot shot yeah did the people know who shot him up there I guess it did his next day may bring him to an eoa Center we are wondering if in your spare time you would go down and make an investigation and check to see if this is true I check this m show and let you know as the results of my f thank you very much all right then these people depend on lions not only because he's a vital link to downtown but he understands I was given a call to meet an another officer and uh the officer related to me that he had caught this young man sniffed in glue and asked me would I make charge against him and place him in Juvenile and of course in talking to the young man he seemed pretty bright and I asked him would he like to go back to school he said yes but he would like to have some type of employment this young man who became interested in him as of yesterday wanted to drop out of school to get a job to help his mother and the family out and we try to encourage him to continue his schooling we'll try to wake him in see and of course the young man wanted to transfer in a high school near to his home and uh I also agreed to that I would help him get as transfer as possible and talk with the principal there but be sure they get your withdrawn official withdrawal from Bas and when you come since you live on proct it won't be a problem in getting scho Lion's watch may not deal in the spectacular but it's more important than solving a crime he's preventing one all the children that are are age School AG they attend school every day uhhuh they don't have to stay out the baby the smaller kids as they were yesterday officer Lion's job in the crime prevention Bureau is a very personal War a war against things he knows about poverty illiteracy the lack of Housing and the lack of understanding but is he winning it like any new Department in the Atlanta police force the battle is all uphill some critics feel the program is nothing more than a Mickey Mouse Corp or a Boy Scout Troop others call it an over overdue Innovation whatever it is it's at least the first step in a long procedure of learning for the rookies like Preston Chambers and David Robertson had we wore teachers like eh Lions we'd have less criticism and a lot more understanding of the people's needs for police you also have to advise him that anything he does say can and will be used against him in a court of law you also have to advise him that he has the right to consult with was a lawyer and to have the lawyer present during the interrogation and that if he after a few weeks on the street with season patrolman from the crime prevention Bureau the rookies like Dave and Preston are given a 30-hour basic police course by veteran police officer Lieutenant SL Sal it familiarizes the men with the laws Supreme Court rulings and city ordinances it's pretty dull but today more than ever vital to a police career and again it comes right back to you as a police officer as to how well you Patrol and how aggressively you Patrol the second phase in Dave and Preston schooling is at the state patrol Academy where experts in various Fields teach and demonstrate what a patrolman might be faced with during his watch that people are today more conscious of their rights than they ever have been before and also it is probably the popular population during this generation these times which is the best read the best informed and let me throw out to you now some figures with respect to the results of Investigation by the FBI of allegations of police brutality remember now in 1963 there were 1376 allegations violation of a federal law for which a fun conviction you could be sentenced to a federal penitentiary of 1376 there were six convictions in 1964 1592 complaints five convictions 1965 1787 complaints nine convictions you use the same degree of performance in the ghetto as you do in the suburb you use the same performance when you arrest the driver of a broken down hack as you would one who is driving a Cadillac observation shows this bias all too evident providing a base for anti police charges whether true or untrue as a school continues Dave and Preston begin to question constructively how well equipped will they be I have to a BAS B idea of what my duties are and everything but along the way I'm going to have to do research over my own and get a better idea of it a lot of times you get to a situation where you got to do it and don't wor just like you we say the school said you got to do it this way but they should have spent more time on more different things and dwelling mainly on bleeding and artificial respiration I think they could have used a little more constructively they spent I think an hour and a half or two hours on emergency child birth this is something that should have been you might one in a thousand births and a police officer might deliver the baby but it's one of the things that if you have to do it you better know how to do it right or you're going to cost somebody their life I wouldn't actually come out and say that I'm qualified to to really save a man's life but I'm qualified to to the point where I be working to save his life until help comes you throw this shoulder which is up toward your target but get squat down make a small Target so if the guy's shooting at you he has a smaller Target to hit and I just Jam the gun right in his gut then I put my trigger finger on the trigger 104 John langsfeld is an FBI agent who teaches firearms training and he takes his jobs seriously he worries whether or not he's getting the important outlines across to the young men do they understand the difference between logical action and an emotional reaction if I knew how to give a course in common sense I'd be the richest guy in the world but how do you teach a guy Common Sense common sense is is is something that you you you get through environment there are aund different factors involved the thing is about the police officer he's on the spot and when something happens he don't have time to call his Sergeant or his captain or get his buddy who's got so-called Comm sense he has to react to a certain situation spontaneously for example the they'll all ask you the question what kind of force can a person use they'll always say to this answer to this question what is necessary I say I would add one more thing to that reasonably necessary what is reasonably necessary and that's where this so this common sense and good judgment comes into play maybe that'll give you a better insight into some of the the young officers uh problems and it take men as they get experienced in the police department like detectives they're like us they become investigators and they know how they're going to work a case and how to handle people but these young officers with they're exposed to Danger every day of the week practical training in the use of their weapon is what these men want to get across to the rookie don't use it unless it's a matter of life and death and how to use it when that time ever comes up I know personally speaking for myself I could have used more time out there I got what they considered a passing grade fact I got a little better than what they consider a passing score but I still say it's a lot different laying there on the ground shooting at a Ste Target than just ducking around an alley trying to shoot at somebody well the thoughts were through your mind is if I shoot that man I'm going to kill him I'm going to take his life away from him he's going to be dead and I want to be alive was was I justified in shooting him was was he wrong and the the tension that's on your on you just from these thoughts that are going through your mind are enough to in some respects cause you to and some people caus you to fall completely apart and other people to lose whatever control they might have had and some people might not be affected by it at all seeing hearing tasting smelling and feeling and we depend upon it and these are the things that tell us that what is in an area or what's at the crime scene and these are the things that we can testify to then when we have testified to this then the expert from the laboratory can tell you approximately how long since the gun was fired also whether or not this gun fired these two cartridge cases so gentlemen everything must prove itself you have the central nervous system depressants the central nervous system stimulants and the hallucinogenic drugs which includes marijuana now one of these three groups is what you would call a truly addicting type drug now this is a drug that has both a mental you would build up both a mental and a physical dependency other words your mind would tell you that you want to take it and not only that if you don't your body will be telling that you want to take it because you would be going through a withdrawal and it's very uncomfortable now your central nervous system depressants you would develop both a mental and a physical dependency this includes the morphine the heroin and also the barbituates if taken if these drugs are taken over a period of time your body will build up a tolerance and you will build up a a physical dependency because your body will tell you that you need this drug now the central nervous system stimulants you can develop a mental dependency uh your mind will tell you that you want to take it however if you do not take it you will not go through any physical withdrawal with your hallucinogenic drugs you will have a mental dependency if you do not take it you will not have withdrawal if I walked into an apartment right now and it was filled with smoke from a marijuana I would say it' be a 50-50 chance that I would find it I would hate to think that I was going to make an arrest and take somebody's Freedom away from them just because I thought that I smell marijuana it has been a real pleasure having you as our guest these past two weeks and we are hopeful that the material presented during these two weeks will be beneficial to you and getting you off to a good start in your law enforcement career I want to commend each of you for successfully compete uh completing this program and it's a real pleasure for me now to award each of you your certificate if you will come forward as your name is called I will award your certificate Preston a Chambers Jr although David and Preston received two weeks of intensive training they both felt the need for more time are Robertson but time is a commodity too expensive for the Atlanta police they needed the rookies on the street but what is the most practical way for fellows like Dave and Preston to learn how to be efficient cops probably the most practical V is being on the street being riding with a guy I mean you set a guy into uh a room have all these papers and books in front of him he can he might be able to grasp a hold of reading and stuff like that can go through that with no trouble to tr but then when it comes to the actual practical part of it they're not able to and so I actually you might say have learned more by going out riding with these guys seeing how they handle these situations that come up with the wife beating where you get there and here's a woman all black and blue man's been beating her since early morning and see how he handles that or how he handles a a a drunk or whatever the situation might come up and then from what you have learned through him along with what you've learned in the academy you put the combin it to along with your beliefs and you come up to be your own policeman to be your own policeman though you have to commit yourself have confidence in knowing what to do I think sometimes that a person won't make an arrest because of a feeling of uncertainty in their own self I know it's it's a heck of a thing when you're thinking about now I fixing to take that man's Freedom away from him take him away from his family take him away from his friends his job and everything else I'm going to put this man in confinement take everything away from that he has am I right am I absolutely sure that what I'm doing is right that's a big responsibility knowing when you're right or wrong takes experience something these two rookies haven't got us yet but they do see examples of proper performance by officers every day down the street which is off to beat from where we were supposed to be down at that bar the uh guy get shot in the stomach with a 38 there was a good example polican got there seeing what the situation was seeing that he bleeding you put him a pressure bandage on his on Over The Gunshot room slow down the bleeding enough what you might say he did save the guy that guy's life if not he would have bled to death right there after a few weeks this learning by doing tactic begins to pay off and they start to realize their worth as police officers we arrested the man for making an OB seen phone call because the facts were there that he did it we had probable calls to believe that he was guilty of that crime he was there he was identified over the phone by the woman they traced the line everything and he made no no attempt to deny it on this morning watch Preston's partner was officer Robert peppers A 15-year veteran he claimed he wouldn't trade places with a rookie for anything too many off obstacles working against today's law enforcement but the law breaker doesn't change we were there I got out and I checked the building and I got back in the car and 2 minutes after I got back in the car we were called completely to the other side of the beat oh we got to the other side of the beat we were notified the people said we didn't call you we didn't we didn't call for the police we went right straight back to where we were and got back and then about an hour later as soon as they opened up they b a burglar now this was not our fault chances are we caught the man in there and scared him I believe the day I died that the man was in there when we were there and he called and sometimes their suspicions prove unfounded this 2-day abandoned Auto turned out to be nothing more than a drunk driver leaving his car then forgetting where he left it [Music] but tonight Preston's watch ends in a lighter note [Music] as these two rookies gain more information about their rle as cops more questions enter their minds more questions than can be answered like the number of police available to protect the citizen it was ridiculous the ratio between the people to be protected to the people to protect them that ratio is ridiculous by our figures there's one officer for every 1,500 persons in Atlanta astounding as those figures are in some quarters that's a very conservative estimate one of Dave's officers recently remarked if Atlantis knew how little police protection they did have because of this lack of Manpower they'd be scared to death but of the officers that do belong and the new men that want to belong to the force they readily answer the critics why they belong I'm not qualified to say that really but I do see a need for more policemen and I've had a couple of people talk to me they said how come you join the police force I come up my told I don't know for I don't know I guess you have to be an idiot to to want to go out you you might say more or less looking for trouble a type of job that's a challenge every day is different you don't you don't ever face two situations exactly alike and it and for the 25 people that will call you a pig the one who who says thank you for helping me makes it worth it I had a guy the other day come up on the street and he asked me he says well well what do you think about police brutality I asked him I says uh now what if you is in my uniform and you're making the pay that I make which isn't really the best in the world and you come up and you got this drunk he's being abusive and he spits head in your face I said now what are you going to do he said well I'm going knock hell out of it and and that there he he answered his own question unfortunately the answers aren't that simple but one question is how can the police carry out their duties to protect the citizenry enforce Law and Order and at the same time avoid the charges and allegations hurled against them they're damned if they do and damned if they don't FBI agent John fille comes up with part of the answer though I don't know frankly how they do it how they hire these boys for what they pay them I don't know how they do it they must want to a lot of them must want to be dedicated to law enforcement just like teachers or nurses my wife's a nurse so there's something more some desire to to to uh be a servant David and Preston's class will complete their formal training with three weeks of City police school once on their own some of these young men will become lacad isical or uncaring and some others overzealous and too suspicious but they're all we've got [Music]