Ramping up
12 Aug 2008 
around evening time 
Matt Winckler
I brought up my computer to the apartment this past weekend and I have some Internet access, so posts may be somewhat more frequent now. On the other hand, given the amount of homework we’re doing, perhaps not.
This week, academy seems to be getting a little more serious. On Monday we had our first instance of punitive pushups: 20 for an officer not keeping his hands above the waist. This was a new mandate as of Monday; from now on we are not allowed to have our hands below the waist in order to form good habits for the “interview” position. The idea is that with your hands in front of you in the chest/abdominal area (with fingers not clasped!), you can more quickly reach your gun and you’re also in a much better defensive position if someone comes at you suddenly.
PT/DT was more brutal Monday, too. We performed the first of three physical tests that will be conducted during this academy–one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. It is very similar to the assessment test we took before coming up here, but consists of 1.5 miles as fast as you can run them, immediately followed by as many pushups as you can perform with no resting, immediately followed by as many situps as you can perform with no resting. (The previous PAT provided 5-10 minute breaks between each activity.) I burned myself out on the run, beating all my previous times by coming in at 9:37. Because of that I only managed 36 pushups, and by the end of my 54 situps I was ready to empty my stomach on the parking lot outside. Perhaps unfortunately, I kept my banana breakfast down, but I felt sick all morning long while practicing prisoner compliance techniques and more falling.
One of my disappointments, by the way, is that I will not be able to share all the juicy details of the ninja moves I’m learning as part of defensive tactics. Apparently we don’t want everyone to know how we’re trained, so that bad guys can’t counter-train. This is reasonable but nevertheless unfortunate, because some of the stuff we’re doing is pretty dang cool. (Or at least it is to someone who’s never had any martial arts training.)
Yesterday’s highlight was perhaps when one of my apartment roommates (I have three) found a black mouthguard lying in the middle of the road and, thinking it was his, picked it up and put it in his mouth. He quickly discovered that it was not in fact his, and later advertised a found mouthguard in the lunchroom. I’m not sure which is more disturbing, the fact that he inadvertently used someone else’s mouthguard or the fact that he was willing to put anything that he’d picked up off a public roadway into his mouth in the first place.
Yesterday evening from 1815 (when we get home after dinner) to 2300 was spent in solid homework and uniform preparation for an inspection this morning. This evening wasn’t quite as bad; I was done with immediate homework by about 2100 and so we practiced some DT in the apartment.
Today we had one so-so class, Traffic Law, one extremely boring class, Liquor Law, and one very interesting class, Bombs and Explosives. I was awestruck at how mind-bogglingly simple it is to construct improvised explosive devices–with parts that you could pick up at your local Wal-Mart, you could quickly construct an IED capable of blowing apart a minivan (the bomb squad expert had video to prove it, using some pipe bombs that he’d constructed). We then got to witness a blasting cap being detonated live using an HMX fuse, which was also fascinating. Contrary to most people’s conception of a fuse burning slowly along the ground (fireworks-style), the HMX ignition travels about 6,800 feet per second, or pretty much instantaneous for all everyday purposes. The fuse itself just looks like yellow plastic clothesline, and when it detonated the entire length of it went bright orange (as in fire), followed by a blasting cap on the end of the fuse blowing a coffee can apart. Good stuff.
After that we got to tour the bomb squad’s response vehicle, a truck that carries all their equipment and their robot. (Pictures of the robot are forthcoming, once I get home to where I can use the Mac’s Bluetooth to get them off my phone.) He said the truck itself cost about $300,000, not counting any of its contents. The robot was around $240,000.
As part of the class, before the practical demonstrations, we witnessed the photographic results of idiocy mixed with blasting caps. This included one bright individual who found a blasting cap (which look about like longish metal cigarettes, and are clearly marked “DANGEROUS - EXPLOSIVE”) with fuse protruding from the end and decided that it would be smart to stick the cap in his mouth and light the fuse as if it was a cigarette. He lived. The results, frankly, were horrific. The picture showed his face as pretty much a pulpy bloody mass with fleshy strips (one of which was what used to be his tongue) hanging down on his chest and dripping blood and gore. His eyes were visible above the carnage, but everything below his eyes was just plain obliterated. Pretty sick. The moral of the story is “don’t smoke blasting caps.”
Criminal Law continues to be my main enjoyment in the classroom. We’ve now covered the various degrees of assault and what elements must be proven in order to convict in each case. It is great fun discussing various provided scenarios with my roommates and deciding how we would charge each one. I probably could have been a lawyer, except then I wouldn’t get to carry a gun everywhere and drive fast with the lights and sirens going.
Tomorrow we’re slated for more DT, two more hours of Traffic Law, and an afternoon full of Collision Investigation. With nothing but water permitted in the classroom, I’m hoping the the Collision Investigation instructors are sufficiently interesting to keep me awake.