My Life in Law Enforcement: A True Life Story #6

Hi guys! Welcome back and thank you again for the continued support for my stories. The kind words and continued visits help keep me motivated to sit in front of this computer for a couple of hours at a time, ha! I'm a man of many talents but typing isn't one of them :)

In the last chapter we ended with talking about the instructor giving all of the cadets a physical assessment and going over the POPAT course (Police Officer Physical Assessment Training). Most of the class was pretty intimidated with the course and had grave concerns, especially a couple of the females. This was a very taxing course for someone that wasn't in very good physical condition. The only concern that I had was that I smoked cigarettes at the time and I was afraid that I would run out of "steem" towards the end and possibly go over the allotted time. Well, we were all getting ready to find out where we stood and how much work we had to do before the actual exam because on day two, we're going to run the course! We had several months to prepare for the real deal but this was good to see where we stood. To give you a re-cap, this is what the course consisted of:

The men have to complete the course in 7 minutes and 20 seconds and the women have 7 minutes and 40 seconds.

• You start out seated in a patrol car with full duty gear on and with your seat belt on. When you're ready, you honk the horn and the instructor will tell you two street names and start the timer. (More on the street names later)

• You exit the car and run 100 yards, circle a cone and run back to the car where you will open the passenger door and pull out a 150 pound dummy and drag it 50 feet.

• After dropping the dummy, you run up and down a flight of stairs 3 times.

• After the stairs you run to a station where you will do 20 push-ups. The instructor is there with his fist on the ground making sure your chin touches when down.

• After the push-ups, you will run through a weighted door that simulates a man holding it on the other side.

• Once through the weighted door, you will have to clear a 5 foot wall.

• Once the wall is cleared you will run to a station where you will do 20 sit-ups.

• After the sit-ups, you take out your flashlight and crawl through a 150 foot culvert.

• Once through the culvert you will do 20 more push-ups and 20 more sit-ups.

• After that you will run 100 yards to the cone that you ran to before, circle it and run back to your patrol car.

• Once you get back to your patrol car, you have to tell the instructor the two street names that he gave you at the beginning of the course. If you can't remember the names, you have to run another 100 yards down and back!

As usual, my nerves are completely jacked but I can't wait to see where I stand. The instructor asked for a volunteer to go first and one energetic young buck jumped at the opportunity. The kid was doing great but towards the end, even he was puffin serious wind. I don't remember what his time was but he did pass on his first try. The state record was something crazy like 3 minutes and something, it was insanely fast. Several of the guys couldn't complete it and some went past the allotted time. You could pretty much tell from the first run who would be able to pass and who wouldn't. For example, we had a female that was in pretty bad shape and by watching her attempt the course, we all knew that there would be no way in hell that she could progress that much in the amount of time that we had. The thing about it is that this was the 3rd time that she had enrolled in the B.L.E.T. program. Each time that she failed the program, it was because of the POPAT. (I've been struggling with the decision to mention this person in my story because I didn't want it to seem like I was judging or picking on her, so please don't think that's the case.) We still encouraged her though and tried to help her the best way we could. The other female that had serious problems with the course was our class president...did I happen to mention that she was late for class again today? Our class president wasn't in poor shape, she was just like a bean pole with no muscle's at all, push-ups were her worst enemy. The other females in the class didn't finish but you could tell that they would be able to after some training, which the instructors were damn certain we would get plenty of. To be perfectly honest, I can't remember what my first run time was. I know that I passed on the first try and I can remember my final time of 6 minutes and 14 seconds. It seems like my first run was around 7:05 maybe.

Remember in the other chapter when I said that my class was responsible for changing the way that the course was run/operated? Well, here is what I meant. At the point where you run back to the patrol car to drag out a 150 pound dummy, it didn't used to be a dummy. Apparently for cost reasons or laziness one, instead of using a dummy we just used a classmate that weighed close to 150 pounds. Well, what's wrong with that you ask? Nothing until this happened, picture this:
A nervous and young cadet takes off from his car, running towards the cone. He's nervous and pushing himself early on to impress everyone looking. He takes out his MAG flashlight and holds it in his hand while he's running because it's just easier that way. These lights are great for self defense and breaking windows but that's about it. They're too big to be running with and smaller lights are preferred. When running with this thing in the holder that's on the belt, it will practically beat you to death while flopping around!

So as the cadet is running back to the patrol unit, his adrenaline is going and he is focused on getting the female out of the car and dragging her 50 feet. He opens the door, unbuckles her seat belt and begins to pull her out. The female classmate has been instructed not to help out in any way possible and to practically be dead weight. As he gets her out of the car, her body starts slumping towards the ground and her back slowly slides down his stomach. The cadet panics and quickly reaches with his arms for a better grip underneath her arms and across her chest, but he forgot about the flashlight! BAM! There went a front tooth! Yep, the dude just knocked out a girls tooth with a MAG-Lite, damn son! The recruiters aren't going to forget that little move, my friend. But that's nothing compared to what other's will do later on, hint, hint. After that incident and dentist bill, the college started using a 150 pound dummy. Lesson learned director!

Now that everyone knows where they stand and knows how hard they have to work, it's time to get busy. We started a routine of jogging selected streets around the college. Normally it would be the class president's role to help out and encourage struggling cadets but in this case, it appears our president may be a weak link in the chain. Other cadets are talking more and more as the days go on about how we may have chosen the wrong person to represent us, but what do we do? We've decided to be patient for the time being and continue to try and help others that need it.

REALLY?

I will be the first to admit that I'm far from perfect and I make mistakes every single day. But sometimes it seems like I can catch the most shit for the stupidest things you could ever imagine. I will never forget this day as long as I live and to be honest, I can't really believe that I'm getting ready to share it with the world lol.
One day the class was running laps on the track at the college. It was a hot summer day on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The track was a pretty good distance away from the actual college just to give you an idea. I had already been running a lot and I had also been drinking a lot of water. Well, nature called and she called pretty hard, I had to pee really bad! There's a building there at the track that has classrooms and restrooms in it but it was locked because it was the weekend. As I round my way back around the track, I ask the instructor if he has a key to the building because I have to use the restroom. He said no but the director did and he should be back down the hill shortly. The director"drove" up to the college for some reason but apparently he was coming back soon so I decided to hold on for a few. I guess you can see where this is going, huh? I'm not sure what he got in to but he was taking his time doing it and my bladder was about to burst! Now ladies, ya'll probably won't understand this but us men love to pee outside every chance we get. It's kind of our way of saving water by not using the toilet. I'm assessing the situation to make sure there's no camera's around to spot the mini Bandito. I thought about going up to the college but it just didn't make any sense and I didn't think I could make it to be honest. I went around the building where no one could see me. There was a man on a tractor mowing a field several hundred yards away from me but we could still see each other. I didn't think anything of it, I mean he's a guy for crying out loud. So I pull out lil Bandito and I am so relieved! I felt sooo much better and I get back on the track and start running laps again. It was about 30 minutes later when I saw the man that was on the tractor talking to the instructor and to the director. As I'm making my way towards them, the man points his finger at me and I'm thinking "Oh shit! Really?!" The director motions for me to come over there and he asks me if I took a leak behind the building. I chuckled and said "yeah, the bathroom door was locked and I had to go." The man on the tractor was over maintenance and grounds keeping and apparently was on a major power trip because he let me have it with both barrels. He even threatened to have me banned from the campus. The entire time I was thinking "Are you effin kidding me?". The director and instructor let him have his little rant and told me to just not do it again. This program meant a lot to me and I didn't want to throw everything away over something stupid so I bit my tongue and politely said "With all due respect, if you're going to have students down here exercising and drinking water, you should make sure the bathrooms are unlocked, sir." From that day forward, the bathrooms were unlocked whenever we were down at the track. To be continued

This post is part of a series of posts that will cover a large portion of my life beginning just before starting my law enforcement career. The content and pictures posted in said articles belong to @bluelightbandit. If you haven't read the prior posts, I highly recommend that you check those out to catch up to speed, thanks!

First post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-1
Second post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-2
Third post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-3
Fourth post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-4
Fifth post: https://steemit.com/story/@bluelightbandit/my-life-in-law-enforcement-a-true-life-story-5