CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified a sergeant with the Issaquah Police Department. Sgt. Todd Johnson led the seminar on police hiring.

ORIGINAL STORY:

On Sept. 9, the Issaquah Police Department began a 10-week Citizens Academy to teach willing community members about the ins and outs of police work. Reporter writer Daniel Nash is attending — this series chronicles his experience and the lessons learned about policing in Issaquah.

No stunt driving allowed

One week before the beginning of the Issaquah Citizens Academy, I was invited to the Issaquah Police Department to speak to Officer Nathan Lane and Sgt. Andy Rorbach, the two officers who had resurrected the academy in 2013 after a decade-long hiatus. I was nervous: Lane had emailed me that they had some concerns about my application, namely what I wrote about intending to publish a series about the class.

“We haven’t had a reporter in the class before,” Lane explained to me in the department conference room. “Usually we see two types of people enroll. We get the people who are interested in learning more about what we do. Then we have the people who want to give us their suggestions. Both are valuable.”

Mostly they were concerned about the privacy of the other students, Rorbach said. At a minimum, that meant no recording devices, no pictures without speakers’ permission and explicit permission before using classmates’ names.

Easy enough. I explained I was firmly in the former category of Lane’s two types of students. Over six years as a reporter, I had covered crime and police in several cities in east Pierce and south King counties, and had built a good working relationship with the Bonney Lake Police Department in particular. Crime quickly became my favorite subject to write about. The style was easy to learn but hard to master — you can knock out a perfectly fine story with the basic facts but, as with anything else, a deeper knowledge of the law and police will make for more satisfying work.

I had spent the winter reading writers handbooks on police procedure and investigation, but years of regular job transfers and changes to my writing beat had kept me from enrolling in other departments’ public outreach programs — a year ago, I was literally a week away from beginning Bellevue PD’s Citizens Academy when the empty seat at the Issaquah news desk came a-calling.

I was hungry for a formal introduction that would help my crime stories — a series would just recoup the lost work time.

“And, honestly, I just think it would be cool to shoot guns and, you know, drive the squad car on one of those orange cone courses,” I said.

Rorbach laughed. “OK, fair enough,” he said. “But we don’t do any kind of driving course.”

Well, shoot.

According to Lane, the academy had included a small defensive driving exercise up until the ’00s, but the cost of small dings and scratches had added up.

My Speed Racer dreams had been thwarted, but Lane and Rorbach told me I was in.

“See you next Wednesday,” Lane said.

Welcome to class

About two-dozen people showed up for the first class. After introducing themselves, Lane and Rorbach called on each student to do the same. The cross-section of citizens was broad: a few store loss prevention officers here, a handful of young people curious about careers in law enforcement there, with a healthy dose of curious office workers and retirees filling out the rest of the classes.

Giving the first presentation of the night, Chief Scott Behrbaum welcomed the class with a quick exercise. Projected on the wall of City Hall’s Eagle Room, a Powerpoint slide stared down with a collage of numbers — 72, 3, 3,373, 11 — in ransom note style, all different sizes and typefaces. Behrbaum turned to face us.

“These are all numbers that relate to the Issaquah Police Department in some way,” Behrbaum said. “As I mention different parts of the department, I want you to shout out the number you think applies. Ready?”

In rapid succession, we learned the department has 65 employees, 35 officers, 30 support staff, 72 beds in the Issaquah Jail, 1,100 emergency calls per month.

Meanwhile, I had answered zero questions correctly — a cardinal sin for a trivia addict and lifelong teacher’s pet.

“How many bookings do you think the jail has in a year?” Behrbaum asked.

I scanned the Powerpoint slide frantically for something among the remaining numbers that looked plausible. “Um… 48,000?”

The chief cracked a small smile at the guess. “That would be really impressive. 3,373.”

Internally, I grumbled, placating myself with daydreams about executing perfect emergency brake turns behind the wheel of a wailing squad car.

After exhausting all the numbers on the board, Behrbaum began an earnest speech about the mission of the department. This included an emphasis on community policing: Moving beyond reactionary response to crime as it happens and engaging in everyday habits like talking to citizens and connecting people in need — like homeless individuals or drug users — to social services.

“We don’t want to just arrest people,” Behrbaum said. “We can’t arrest ourselves out of these problems.”

Thinking about this, I remembered a police blotter entry from a few days before, in which an officer had responded to a report of a man acting suspiciously. The man told the officer he just wanted to leave town. With other departments I had covered, the call might have ended there with a warning about loitering or a homeless ordinance. But the Issaquah officer had done something unheard of to me: He bought the man a bus pass and helped him catch the next route.

Behrbaum revealed further progressive policies as he went on. The department emphasized its patrol unit and rotated officers through specialties like detective work and traffic enforcement on multi-year rotations. Officer seniority didn’t factor into shift assignments either: Every officer worked the same mix of days and nights.

At the same time, he was quick to defend against negative portrayals in the media of police “militarization” — namely, the acquisition and use of equipment like rifles, beanbag shotguns and riot gear.

He recalled an incident from Sept. 21, 2011, when a man stopped his car on Front Street, took out a rifle and opened fire randomly. “If someone were running around town, shooting at citizens and you were called to stop him, you would want to know you had the equipment to handle it,” he said.

A classmate asked Behrbaum what kept him up at night.

“As a chief you worry about everything,” he said. “I am worried about what the next big incident might be. And I worry about people who just need help. When people are in need of human services, they have to make choices. Sometimes they have to make tough choices quickly and they don’t always make the right ones.”

So you want to be a cop

Sgt. Todd Johnson opened the next presentation with a handout filled with screen captures from films. Our assignment: Name that cop movie.

Finally, a chance to shine. I filled each one out correctly and felt a little twinge of delight when only one other student identified the Simon Pegg comedy “Hot Fuzz.”

“I wanted to open with this because we grow up watching movies and television about police and we develop an interest in law enforcement based on what we see,” Johnson said. “If the characters are rookies, they become police in no time at all, the cases are nothing but action and everything’s solved in an hour and a half.”

In the real world, the road to becoming an officer is long. And it begins with that-most-mundane of steps familiar to any 21st Century job hunter: Looking for openings online. Johnson pointed to PublicSafetyTesting.com and GovJobsToday.com as popular sites for newbies and veteran officers looking for a lateral change, respectively. Adults younger than 22 can enroll in programs like Police Explorers to be connected with mentors and occasionally wet their feet with light security work at community events.

“It’s a great opportunity for someone who’s not quite old enough to get the job yet,” Johnson said.

Applicants to police departments submit to standardized written and physical tests to ensure they have a basic sense of ethics and fitness to perform police work.

Candidates who move on from there may be invited by departments for an oral board consisting of questions from police officers — an experience that can be particularly nerve-wracking, Johnson said.

“Everyone’s nervous around cops,” he said. “I’m nervous around cops. Even if I’m driving home late at night and I have an officer behind me, I start going through a mental checklist. Are my brake lights out? What’s my speed?”

Academy classmate Rachel Quimby had recently completed four oral boards, including one with Issaquah police. The 23-year-old clerk for the King County Redmond District Court has recently begun exploring careers in law enforcement; she eventually hopes to become a detective and work with victims of sex crimes, she said.

“I think going in for my first [oral board], I was pretty nervous, but they became easier” she said. “The whole process has really boosted my confidence.”

The hiring process also includes a lie detector examination, background check and psychological exam. But if all goes well, interested departments invite candidates to attend a centralized police academy, run by the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission.

The academy puts police candidates in a months-long course that teaches basic police methods through hearing, seeing and doing. The paramilitary nature of the academy also teaches police skills to students in sneaky ways, Johnson said.

“It’s very regimented, the academy,” he said. “It gives you that command presence that you need as an officer but it also teaches you 360-degree awareness. When an officer comes into the room, you have to stand at attention, so guys start looking over their backs or in reflective surfaces and constantly scanning to avoid punishment. But it has the side effect of teaching them to be aware of their surroundings at all times.”

After the academy, newly minted officers are hired by their sponsoring department but must complete a probationary period on patrol with a training officer.

“It takes three-to-five years to really be comfortable with the job,” Johnson said. “We don’t expect [new officers] to know everything but we expect them to be comfortable enough to ask.”

Towards the end of the night, Johnson rewarded the class with a video from a training exercise. Apparently taken from the backseat, footage of Johnson behind the wheel of a patrol car came onscreen. I could see him pacing to the right of another car through the windshield, keeping the nose alongside the other vehicle’s wheel well. I recognized what was about to happen before the words left Johnson’s mouth.

“What you’re about to see is a PIT maneuver,” he said. “PIT stands for Pursuit Intervention Technique. Basically, if a suspect is trying to elude us by car, it’s one means we have to end a chase.”

He quickly explains the physics behind the PIT: An officer lines up the nose of his car with the suspect’s rear wheel well and gently nudges it, causing a controlled spin out that causes the other car’s transmission to stall.

“It looks very dramatic, but if you watch my hands on the steering wheel, it’s really not as bad as it seems,” he said.

He’s right. I watch on-screen as Johnson guides the steering wheel just a few inches to the left, but the result is spectacular. I silently cheer as the other patrol car does a loop-de-loop past the windshield and kicks up a cloud of dust as it stops on the road shoulder.

Sgt. Johnson, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Next: The department and patrol