Law & Order, Prison Break and CSI

Another update from my leadership class. Today was Criminal Justice Day. We spent the day with City of Kissimmee and Osceola County's finest!

The day started with a Q & A session with the County Sheriff and the City's Chief of Police at the KPD Firing Range & Training Center. We learned a lot about how the different agencies cooperate and share resources to maximize efficiency. During this session, we were surprised by the S.W.A.T. team. As we listened intently to the Sheriff and the Chief we heard this loud BOOM and saw smoke coming from the main door to the portable classroom. By the time everyone came back to their senses, the S.W.A.T. team had already "secured" the room and had all of us with our hands up in the air...some of us laughing while others had tears in their eyes all from the shock. That all happened definitely in less than 30 seconds...it seemed instantaneous to me. We learned that the BOOM comes from a "flashcan"(if I remember correctly), it makes the loud noise to distract the people inside long enough to get the team inside to gain control of the room. Moral of the story: If you hear a loud boom, look the other way...because they're not coming in from where the noise is coming from.

After a Q & A with the SWAT men, we moved outside to talk to the "puppy cops" (inside joke).

The dogs and handlers are amazing. The dogs go through a 600 hour training program with their handlers. All dogs are imported from Europe (Holland, Czech Republic, Germany) because Europeans guarantee their dogs. Also, in these countries there is no "backyard" breeding of these dogs because in order to breed a dog the owner must have a permit from the government. The dogs cost between $7-10,000 untrained. Once they bring them here and are trained, they are worth $20-30,000 depending on their specialty. Females are more expensive because they carry the bloodline for the dog.

After this we were free to roam around the training facility and take part in all kinds of fun activities. I headed to the repelling wall first. I thought it'd be fun to do until I got there and realized it was 45 feet high and I could see the tower moving as the wind blew. Still I felt it was something that I had to "conquer". I let some classmates go first so I could see how they did. They all agreed that the hardest thing was climbing to the top (no actual stairs, just pieces of wood hammered to the back of the wall) and taking the first step off the wall.

Once I was on top it really hit me...I was very nervous. I felt a little nauseous and started shaking a bit. I refused to look down so once I was all strapped in I just walked backwards towards the edge. It took a little while for me to have the courage to let go and actually repel but once I did it was so much fun. The hardest thing is taking that first step...mind over matter!

Then I went to the sniper rifle station. I really didn't expect this to be as hard as it was. It looks so easy on TV, just point the cross to the target and shoot...not quite. It takes a while for the cross lines to be visible and focused enough to shoot. Once you have it, there's no way to miss though. I hit my target right in the middle of his chest and surprisingly there was little kickback from the rifle but a very loud noise.

Handguns and automatic rifles (sort of machine guns) were next. Shooting the handgun once was easy. The hard part was shooting it twice in a row and staying on target...I wasn't able to stay on target the second shot because my body didn't "accept" the recoil from the gun. That's what they train so much for.

The automatic rifle was extremely heavy for me, I could barely hold it up. I scared the guy a couple of times because after shooting I would point the rifle down and he thought I was going to drop it. I just couldn't hold on to it for that long. It didn't have as large a "kickback" or recoil as I expected. Again, I could do the one shot, two shot but once it got to the infinite rounds it was hard to control.

For the rest of the day, I don't have pictures because cameras were not allowed. I should've taken a picture of the Corrections bus we had to ride to the jail tour. They loaded us into an actual Corrections bus, with bars on the windows and caged passenger area. We had 6 motorcycle officers escort us to the County jail.

At the County jail, we were warned that it would be a disturbing tour and to be aware that we'd be seeing inmates in personal quarters (i.e. toilets, showers). We toured with the warden of the jail and he showed us every inch of the structure. On a sidenote, if any of you watch Prison Break, you'd find this funny...the warden's last name is Fisher so they inmates have nicknamed "Fish" just like Scofield on the show :).

It was very eye opening. I did not know that this local jail would house murderers and other violent or "serious" crime offenders but they do. There are 16 maximum security inmates at the moment. These men are in their cells for 23 hours per day, they are allowed one hour outside their cell (but still inside their pod area) for a shower and phone call. That was very disturbing to me because that means that there is little chance for these men to be rehabilitated. I'm surprised they even survive without making it to the psych ward.

The max security doesn't necessarily mean just the murderers or sexual offenders, it just houses the men who just can't behave in the general population pods. If a murderer comes in and for 30 days he behaves, he is allowed to stay in the gen pop cells. The inmates in the gen pop have access to a lot of services and programs. They receive excellent health care while in jail and have the opportunity to receive their GED while inside.

The warden believes that only about 10% of the inmates WANT to be rehabilitated while the others are or will be career criminals. It was very interesting to hear him speak about these men. It's almost as if he's a teacher and these are his kids. The warden knows a lot of them by name (career criminals). No one in the jail carries a weapon, they only force they can use against inmates is pepper spray. He explained that while police officers are trained to use weapons to gain control, corrections officers are trained to use their words. Therefore, they respect the inmates and in turn the inmates respect them. They don't have a problem with inmates attacking the officers, it's mostly each other. Last year they only had 90 inmate fights which is pretty good according to him.

After the jail tour, we headed to the Sheriff's Department to tour the CSI lab. Having taken a few classes with a CSI in college I remember her telling me, "It's not really that high tech" so I didn't set very high expectations. To my surprise they do have much of the same technology "as seen on TV". However, it is TV and they do exaggerate some. First, CSI's are civilians. They do not have arrest powers and do not carry weapons. Their main job is to process crime scenes and collect evidence. The evidence analysis of DNA is not done by local jurisdiction, that is completed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (state agency). I'll skip over some of the basic demos that we've all seen on the shows like powdering and lifting prints but I do want to share something that was pretty cool. We've all seen how on TV, the CSI's will find the smallest piece of fabric, or a strand of hair and I've always wondered HOW the heck did they see that and know to pick it up. Ah Ha....there's this box with a light tube, sort of a flashlight, that has different colors of light depending on what you are looking for. For this demo, she used a blue light (it's actually white but to our eyes it looks blue). Depending on the color of the light, you have to wear different colored goggles. In this case, we wore orange goggles. She pointed the light to her black pants. We've all been under a black light and seen all the little fuss that shows on our clothing under a black light. Well, to the naked eye that's what we saw just fuss. Once we put our goggles on, we didn't see the light or the fuss...all we could see was the stuff that's out of place because it fluoresced. For example, she had been working around the lab and had some powders and swab left overs on her pants that were completely invisible to us with the naked eye but with the goggles, we could ONLY see that on her pants because it fluoresced (shined back at us) ... pretty cool!

I could go on and on but those are the main highlights. It was an unforgettable experience!