Inside view on first responders

After Sean McCanns sister graduated from a police academy.

After Sean McCann’s sister graduated from a police academy.

Now, I know this is a controversial topic with all that’s happened in 2020, and while I agree that there may be some corruption or racism within the police system,  I still think we need the police and other first responders. Who will help you if there’s a home invasion, a robbery, or a murder if we defund the police?

Coming from someone who lives with someone who is a police officer and knows another officer very well, I get to see things from their point of view. There’s so much time, effort, and dedication that it takes to become a first responder. For one, you have to go through a brutal academy that is usually almost a year long. In that academy you have to learn everything there is to know about being a police officer.  During the 9 months you’re in it coming home beat each day – just to go back and do it again the next while only getting the weekends off. However, before you can even get into the academy, you have to go through a test course, and let me tell you: it’s not easy. The test course includes a mile run that has to be done in under 12 minutes and a dummy body drag that weighs 150 pounds and is all dead weight.

My sister had to be there at 6:30 a.m. with her bag that weighed about 40 or so pounds just to have her things dumped or thrown on the ground some days, then she had to pick it all up. After everything was back in her bag she, and the rest of the people in the academy with her, had to run with their bags on for however long the drill sergeants said to do so. On top of going through the academy, she had to go through college. So, even when she got home, she’d have school work to do. There was almost never a break other than the weekends and even then sometimes they’d schedule some weekend days. I’d ask how her day was after the academy everyday and almost every time her response was “terrible.”

Every day was something different. Some days she would work on defensive tactics with her class of officers and she was up against one of the biggest guys there. They would do that for hours and she would come back with bruises because of how long they were working on it. Other days they would all go to the shooting range which wasn’t bad, until they started shooting assault rifles; the shooting part of it wasn’t too difficult, but it was the course they ran at this shooting range that had rocks and broken glass on the ground that they had to go prone in, my sister came home a few times with cut up arms from the broken glass on the ground. 

After persevering through the academy, she was awarded one of the three awards. She was given the defensive tactics award, which is rarely given to females. After graduating from the academy, she went for a few interviews to see where she wanted to work and who wanted to hire her and was quickly hired at Maynard Police Department. Upon being hired, her and two other new officers had to be tazed because they carry it on their duty belt and they need to know the power it has, along with the effect it has on you just in case she got tazed and needed to call for back-up. 

Each day there’s a new story. Even if it’s a laid back day, it seems there’s always something going on. In the end, though,  she’ll always say “I couldn’t see myself doing any other job.”