Police Department Field Trip

Our neighboring town has a pretty new police department, so when another homeschool mom set up a tour and asked if we wanted to join them we jumped at the chance to get to see the new facility. 

Our tour guide was a college student, who works as a community officer, that did a wonderful job and had the perfect personality for what she was doing.  One part that was a little unnerving was when she took us to the underground garage to see the police cars.  The garage is two tall stories underground.  I am more of a surface dweller, so when she said that we were going to level -2 I asked Dad if he thought that really meant what I thought it meant.  Yep.  No one else seemed one iota alarmed, but the whole time I was thinking, "okay this is all nice but up lets go back up."

The tour went down this hallway, in one side of a room and out another side, back down another hallway, up one stair case, and way, way down another one as we were going to the underground garage.  The whole building was very confusing, or at least the way she took us through, so I thought if I got separated from the group, the only hope I would have would be to find a security camera and start yelling help at it hoping someone would come to my rescue.  I would have to find a camera because oddly it seemed like there were almost no people working there, just room after empty room, so there wouldn't even be anyone to ask where you were.   Another mom comment the same thing to me when we got back to the room we met in so I wasn't the only one that felt lost.  Perhaps the reason for the lack of people could be because this building was more administrative, the jail and all the other parts one would think of a police station is housed at the court house building.  They don't even fingerprint people at this location unless it is for a job such as, and this surprised me, a taxi cab driver.  I never knew taxi cab drivers where fingerprinted.  Of course, I don't ride in cabs so I guess I never gave it any thought.

Another interesting thing we learned was that the drug dog is a very, very friendly Golden Lab.  He loves to be petted and given attention.  When he smells drugs on someone he just goes over and sits down by them.  The person with the drugs would probably just be thinking 'wow this dog really likes me' and maybe even give him a little scratch behind the ears.  That is until they had the handcuffs on.  Sneaky, I like that and seems much safer than how the German Shepards are trained to take care of business.  I didn't even know there were police dogs that weren't German Shepards.  If we were somewhere and I saw someone with a German Shepard I might wonder if they were a police officer, just because you don't see a lot of German Shepards, but if I saw someone with a lab I would just think it was someone out with their dog. 

The last thing that stuck out in my mind was while we were listening to the presentation they gave at the beginning of our tour, a man stuck his head in the door and the speaker introduced him as the sargent in charge of the officers that are in the schools.  Each senior and junior high in town has not one, but two officers there at all times.  Thank you for another reason to reaffirm why we homeschool.