Almost as much change as a presidential candidate

02 Aug 2008  in mid-morning  Matt Winckler

Change. Change! Change. That’s what I’m all about. Let’s have some change!

Thursday was my last day as an employee of Battelle. It was an odd feeling, but not anything unexpected. I managed to keep my emotions in check, and as far as I can tell my coworkers managed to do the same, since they refrained from jumping in the air while clicking their heels until after I’d walked out for the last time and relinquished my prox card.

Yesterday I showed up for work at the police station and began my new career. It was a hard day at the office. First off I was issued my ballistic nylon duty belt and gear, body armor, class-A uniform, some wonderfully comfortable tactical boots, the very fine baseball cap shown above, and duty weapon: a .40 caliber Glock 22 that I’m already extremely fond of. The rest of the morning was spent learning how to field strip and clean the Glock, as well as proper shooting stance and grip (something that’s going to take me a lot of practice to unlearn my self-taught bad habits). After a break for lunch, we went to KPD’s firing range and spent the next three hours or so shooting. We went through various exercises and then shot the qualification course (two other new officers were present who needed to qualify for the department, since they’re laterals and not going to academy like me). Despite my bad habits and lack of practice, I still managed to qualify at the “Master” level, shooting 245/250 on one run and 248/250 on the second try. However, as the instructors rightly pointed out, the qualification unfortunately measures “precision shooting” as opposed to “combat shooting”. While the former may come into play sometimes in a police career, the latter is far more important to master, and it is also the one that will require the most work on my part. Additionally, the two laterals mentioned that the academy qualification course (which will actually define which “skill level” pin I get to wear on my uniform) may be more difficult. Actually, I hope that it is more difficult, because if someone like me can come in off the street and shoot at “Master” level, then the designation doesn’t seem to mean much.

On Monday morning I will be sworn in, and immediately thereafter I will depart for Spokane to begin my first week of police academy. I don’t know yet how the schedule and workload will go;the two laterals I was training with yesterday (and probably holding back as a neophyte) had rather conflicting opinions–one said the Spokane academy was a cakewalk, and the other seemed to think it was pretty difficult challenge. I’ll find out for myself soon enough.

Since I don’t expect to have Internet access in any convenient form, I’ll be adding Mystie to this blog so that she can post the interesting stories here before I forget about them.

I would appreciate prayer in general and for the following things in particular:

• That my family would survive the next four and a half months intact. It will definitely be a challenging time.
• That my knee would not explode or fall apart from under me. I saw an orthopedic fellow and got an MRI and everything, and he pointed out some little things but said there are no restrictions on activity, but it still feels queer sometimes.
• That I will be fleet of foot, strong of arm, sharp of wit, and holy of walk.
• That I will have an imperial ton of fun.

Lord willing, I’ll be hitting the streets of Kennewick with a training officer in mid-December.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 and is filed under Police, Police Training, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.