Are we lawyers, yet?

Week 3, Day 4

This has been a somewhat tough week and what I mean by that, is the classes. We have had a lot of information thrown at us for the last two weeks, but for some reason this week just seems very overwhelming. We have had classes on hate crimes, how to survive your law enforcement career and of course more law classes. I wanted to be a part of this profession (not to sound cliché) but, to help people. I just never imaged it would include so many law classes. I guess I don’t know what I was thinking, but in order to uphold the law…well we need to know it first. We had a class today on the U.S. Constitution. A lot of us were thinking…GREAT, the Constitution!! But I am here to tell you, this instructor was not only one of the funniest instructors I have ever had, but also really good. By the end of the class, I had a grasp of the Constitution and got a great refresher on American History. The last two weeks have really been filled with law classes. But we are starting to put together what types of crimes we can charge offenders with and how to look up the crimes in our “Blue Book”. The Blue Book translates to the Colorado Revised Statute book. Basically the Bible for all law enforcement officers, as well as attorneys. When I first saw this book, I thought there’s no way I am going to learn what this book contains and the print is so small. But now it’s becoming second nature.

So this week has not only been a long week for academics, but we have had a couple PT sessions thrown in as well. We had PT on Monday, which consisted of a formation run. We ran up the bike trail from our building to the Taj Mahal and back. It was a good run. A couple of the students called cadence for the run, which was awesome and motivating. We had another PT session today that consisted of a type of “Cross fit” training. We do sprints in between push-ups, crunches, flutter kicks and weight lifting. It is an exhausting workout, but we push each other through it and NOBODY gives up. Everyone pushes through the pain and we keep going. Tomorrow we have our first PT session at Red Rocks. We have all heard the stories and I think for most of us, we are just not sure what to expect. I know for myself, I will eat a light lunch just incase it wants to re-visit me while I am running the stairs. I will fill you in on how this session goes.

Tomorrow morning, at 0750 hours we are doing a memorial service for the police officers who have died in the state of Colorado. This is a way for us to pay tribute to them and their families and also for us to understand what this job entails. So each of us has been given a name of an officer, the agency they were with and the year they died. I have the name of John Spellman, from Denver Police Department, who died in 1906. I actually did some research on him and found out that he died on Monday, June 18, 1906 in Denver on 19th Street. He was attempting to stop and arrest three drunken individuals, when he was fatally shot. What is important about remembering the officers who have gone before us is…this could be anyone of us in this line of work. You know the old adage, everyone runs away from trouble and we run towards it. So I know for me, this is not just a name but a person who died doing what he probably loved to do and also to say we still remember you and thank you for your sacrifices.