Johns Creek Citizens Police Academy cadets hit the ground running Tuesday night with hands-on instruction in traffic enforcement techniques, including impaired driving investigations, felony traffic stop protocol, a motorcycle maneuvers demonstration, and driver-vehicle engagement.
This is week two of nine for the diverse group of 21 adult cadets - in all nine women and 12 men - taking part in the fall and final academy class of the semiannual series now in its third consecutive year.
With military exactitude, JCPD Traffic Safety Unit Sgt. Ronnie Young spared little time taking the class to task with a 20-minute classroom lecture on TSU’s operations.
JCPD’s Traffic Safety Unit is to overall police operations and its Traffic Enforcement Unit as Special Forces is to the military: a highly trained and specialized division capable of mobilizing on a moment’s notice.
It’s a seek-and-destroy minded operation with one goal in mind - ensuring the safety of Johns Creek’s citizens and that of the officers themselves.
Four officers comprise this group - a sergeant, two motorcycle officers, and a hit-and-run investigator - to further JCPD’s goal to “protect life and reduce wrecks,” Sgt. Young said during his classroom lecture.
Sgt. Young believes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
And that there are no "accidents" - only wrecks because 99 percent of wrecks happen because someone has violated the law.
So Sgt. Young's division focuses its efforts into three main strategies: education, awareness and enforcement.
Education, Sgt. Young said, focuses on community outreach, with public presentations, to school-age children especially, print and online collateral focusing on the dangers of impaired driving, promoting seat belt usage, and overall prevention of speeding.
Awareness starts with JCPD’s compilation of monthly wreck statistics. Traffic enforcement then takes that data to comprise strategies on how to tackle the stats - electronic speed monitoring devices are placed along roadways or in subdivision to monitor average speeds or they’ll place mobile electronic flashing speed limit signs to promote self-corrective behavior.
And then comes enforcement, a combination of statistical information and community complaints that determine where the traffic unit will focus its hard-nosed efforts.
Translation: speed traps and speeding tickets.
“But we are a compassionate unit,” said Young after cadets watched a moving, professionally produced five-minute video montage of staged accidents featuring distracted or impaired drivers and the destructive consequences of their actions on innocent lives.
“Because everyone in our division has done that, to to be the one to have to tell family members that their loved ones are never coming home,” Sgt. Young added. “So that’s why we work so hard to make Johns Creek a better, safer place to live.”
Volunteers during the classroom lecture were asked to come forward to try a heel-to-toe, nine-pace roadside field test officers use to determine a driver’s level of physical impairment.
Instructors upped the ante by having one volunteer wear a customized pair of goggles that mimicked a sense of intoxication.
The class broke into raucous laughter after several failed attempts by a volunteer to walk a straight line quickly devolved into an exercise in frustration.
But impaired driving is no laughing matter, Sgt. Young assured the cadets. “The biggest bottom line is we’ll get you off the road.”
Following the classroom session, cadets were divided into three groups and split rank to three stage areas marked by orange cones in the police headquarters parking lot.
There, motorcycle patrol officer and impaired driving specialist Darrin Garrett greeted cadets with a tour of JCPD’s mobile test station and instruction on how, when and why JCPD’s traffic safety unit deploys it.
Anyone charged with driving while impaired or intoxicated in Johns Creek is in for a long night. Johns Creek subcontracts its detention facility with the city of Doraville, Officer Garrett said.
“So that’s where we take them after an arrest. We drive them to Doraville where they take it from there,” Garrett said.
Doraville is located about 25 minutes south of Johns Creek just inside the northeast arc along I-285.
After Garrett’s mobile trailer station, the groups combined again to watch his motorcycle patrol partner Cpl. Mike Thomas, a 29-year veteran formerly with the Fulton County Police Department on the motorcycle patrol squad there since 1986, perform a series of tight turns and balance maneuvers on his JCPD-issue, customized 2009 Harley-Davidson Road King.
“But there’s one thing I won't do and that’s chase a bad guy on this motorcycle,” Thomas joked to immediate laughter. “I’m too old for that.”
From there, cadets got hands-on instruction from Officer Garrett with a laser speed detection gun, prompting curious looks by some passing drivers and sudden braking from others who were traveling west on Johns Creek Parkway past the police station entrance Tuesday evening.
The felony stop outdoor classroom station gave cadets another hands-on opportunity.
This time, cadets took turns issuing verbal command scripts to have a potentially dangerous driver - a former JCPD citizen academy volunteer - voluntarily place his hands out the driver side window, reach for the external door handle, exit the car slowly, walk backward with hands interlaced behind the neck, and then take to his knees when back-up officer Mark Johnson would enter from behind his cover to affect an arrest.
All of this while the cadet, crouched behind the cruiser’s door under blue strobe lights, issued commands with the PA microphone in one hand and a rubber service weapon replica in the other.
“I think it’s great and I really wanted to learn more about how the police operate in our community,” said Murty Sanku of Johns Creek after his turn on the felony stop session.
Sanku remembered how the police operated in his former home in Hyderabad, India. And he said he’s impressed so far with the citizens academy instruction and officers’ personal attention with cadets and camaraderie with one another.
“You never know who’s in that car, what kind of day they had or what’s going on in their head,” Cpl. Mike Thomas warned the cadets. “ That’s why you handle them all with good tactics.”
The final instruction station was manned by Traffic Safety Unit Sgt. Ronnie Young.
This mock stop stop educated cadets on approach techniques officers use to check driver’s license, insurance and registration information after a stop has been initiated.
Sgt. Young guided cadets on proper technique from the cruiser door to the stopped subject’s vehicle window and back again to the squad car.
“See how the front of the patrol car is parked at an angle?” Sgt. Young asked the group. “That’s so you have cover from the engine block just in case you get into a shoot out.”
Young stressed safety with every step, including approaching the stopped vehicle by walking at an angle “so you’re not an easy target” to placing his hand on the subject vehicle trunk not only to ensure no one can ambush him from it but to leave his fingerprints on the car for proof of contact.
Returning to the cruiser to run the subject’s license can be as dangerous as the stop itself because of oncoming traffic, Young said, adding “you’ve got bad buy dilemma one and traffic is number two.”
“This is a great way to see how police operate. And it’s a great way to meet new people,” said Brandy Cochran who lives in southernmost JCPD police Zone 7 in the Rivermont subdivision off Barnwell Road. “You never realize what all goes into it, lots of details.”
Probably the best instruction from Tuesday night’s academy class came once again from Sgt. Young.
If not for the cadets themselves than for the general public.
“Attitude is everything,” he said. “Attitude won’t get you out of a ticket. But it might get you one.”
To follow week three of the Fall 2011 Johns Creek Citizen Police Academy class, be sure to check back here on Johns Creek Patch next week.