AUGUST 2021 Blues Vol 37 No. 8

PART 1 The New Recruits

PART 1 The New Recruits “I want to be the change.” By LANE DeGREGORY, Times Staff Writer They can’t get over the wall. It’s 6-feet tall, made of smooth wood. Nothing to hold or stand on. Even the tallest men are struggling. “Run at it. Get a grip. Haul yourself up,” shouts a coach in a red shirt. “Don’t give them a huge target.” You never know when you’re going to have to chase a suspect over a wall. It’s a drizzly day in late September. The police recruits are lined up behind St. Petersburg College’s Allstate Center, between the rifle range and shoot house. Three weeks into training, they’ve learned to keep their eyes on the door, do push-ups on cadence, tell reasonable suspicion from probable cause, frisk someone, search a car and carry coffee in their left hand so they can grab their gun with their right. Brittany Moody is the first woman in her class to conquer the obstacle course. She played five sports growing up and works out every morning. This morning, they’re starting the obstacle course that’s designed to predict their perils: crawl under a fence, slither through a tube, hoist yourself into a make-shift attic. They’re slick with sweat, covered in dirt, cheering each other on. “You got it! Come on! Keep going!” If you fall, you have to start over. “You have three chances,” the coach says. In the real world, you might only get one. Class 219 is mostly white and male, but it is the most diverse yet, said Joe Saponare, who oversees recruit training at St. Petersburg College’s Law Enforcement Academy: seven women, five Black people, two Latinos. Half went to college. Six were in the military. The youngest, age 19, lives with his parents. One of the oldest is raising a son. She’s already earned a nickname, Mama Moody. Some registered for the academy last spring, before George Floyd was killed, before people took to the streets demanding that governments defund the police. They decided to attend anyway. Others applied because of those outcries. They know they will be insulted, targeted, hated — some critics are openly hostile. But 30 young people signed up for the first class since the pandemic closed the academy. Saponare, who cadets call Coach Sap, expected applications to plummet after the protests last year. Instead, he said, more people than ever applied. No agency tracks how many people apply to U.S. police academies, according to the National Police Foundation. Anecdotal evidence from the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies is contradictory. Some departments are struggling to fill vacancies. And officers are quitting at record rates, many after only a few years. In September 2019, even before the protests, the Police Executive Research Forum released a report about the “workforce crisis.” It said the job of policing has become more challenging, as officers grapple with social issues like mental illness, and new types of criminals, like those who deal in cyberspace. St. Petersburg Police Chief Anthony Holloway, an officer for 35 years, said last summer was the first time he questioned whether he still wanted to serve. “It felt like everybody was against us,” he said. “I’d like to see the naysayers see what our officers have to deal with every day.” 54 The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE 55