Ready for Action : Law enforcement: Reserve officers celebrate their completion of a rigorous training program. But few departments are hiring these days.

It could have been a graduation ceremony for any high school or college.

But instead of caps and gowns, the graduates who strode across the auditorium stage Sunday wore khaki uniforms and most had crew cuts. And instead of earning diplomas, they collected rolled-up certificates marking their completion of a 20-week, 356-hour crash course for reserve police officers.

The fact that more than half the original class dropped out along the way was less of a black mark against the institution than a badge of courage for those who endured.

For Theresa Adams, 33, of Simi Valley, the ceremony marked the belated start of a career she initially considered as a 19-year-old clerk working for Ventura police. “This is like my college graduation, the one I never had,” she said as relatives swarmed around her offering congratulations.

For Adams and 47 other classmates, Sunday’s ceremony on the grounds of the Seabee base in Port Hueneme heralded the end of a rigorous, military-style boot camp.

Part of the Ventura College curriculum, the Ventura County Police and Sheriff’s Reserve Academy is taught by instructors from the Oxnard Police Department.

Three nights a week and every Saturday, cadets met at Camarillo Airport, where they would plow through a condensed version of the lessons taught at the academy for full-time officers.

They learned to shoot and use their batons. They studied the law and learned to write traffic tickets. And they learned to quiet domestic conflicts and quell other volatile situations.

When they flubbed, the instructors demanded tedious, lengthy handwritten reports explaining their mistakes--a punishment intended to emphasize the importance of neat script and clarity in police reports.

“The toughest part was trying to get together as a team. Trying to weed out the guys who wanted to be individuals and didn’t want to be part of the team,” said graduate Alex Arnett, 23, of Oxnard.

But with graduation behind them, the real challenge has just begun for many.

Despite the academy’s emphasis on teamwork, the contest for full-time and reserve positions in a tough job market promises to pit the cadets against one another.

Like many of his classmates, Arnett, who works as a traffic cadet for Oxnard police, is hoping to use the academy as a springboard to a full-time career as a police officer.

With few departments hiring new recruits, he and the others hope the experience of being a reserve will give them an edge for the spots that are available.

“We may have 40 very good reserves at Oxnard,” said Assistant Chief Stan Myers, who was a reserve for three years in the 1960s. “But when it comes right down to it, they’re all in competition with each other and members of the public for five or six open slots.”

Nevertheless, Arnett believes being a reserve will better prepare him for oral interviews and demonstrate his commitment to law enforcement. So far, he has tested for a full-time job in Ventura and in Mesa, Ariz., but has not heard from either one.

“If you want it bad enough, you’re going to have to go out and get it,” he said. “Nobody’s going to give it to you.”

Ernest Wolosewicz, 24, who was chosen class president and owns an electronics repair store in Burbank, has a similar plan.

“It’s a stepping stone,” he said. “If I don’t make it as a full-time officer with the Oxnard Police Department, I’m going to go for their reserve program.”

But these days, just getting a job as a volunteer cop can be tough.

Although reserve officers aren’t paid, they perform the same duties and carry the same equipment as full-time officers. The cost of that gear is what limits the number of reserves one department can support.

In Simi Valley, for example, only four reserve positions were open--not enough to accommodate all those who applied from the class. And in Oxnard, seven reserve officers were sworn in last month, but none were members of the most recent class to graduate.

“Right now, we’re not taking any new officers,” said Officer Chris Graham, who coordinates Port Hueneme’s reserve program, the only one in the county to allow reserves to work alone in a patrol car.

Despite the shortage of spots, the reserve academy has continued to churn out two new cadet classes every year. The full-time Ventura County Sheriff’s Academy, however, has not graduated a class since February of last year because there have not been enough new deputies and officers to fill a class.

Still, Graham and others say there has never been a better time to be a reserve. As cash-strapped departments search for more ways to put uniforms on the street, reserves are an increasingly attractive option.

“It’s going to happen,” Graham said. “It’s cheaper to put a reserve officer out there and have them answering calls.”

In the past year, Los Angeles and Orange counties have deployed reserves in special efforts to catch teen-age graffiti “taggers.”

And in Oxnard, the policy on reserves was recently revised, permitting them to work in pairs without a full-time officer for the first time. Under the new policy, the department has begun using reserves on walking patrols in a crime-plagued pocket on the city’s south side.

“We’re looking for ways we can get more out of them,” said Lt. Joe Munoz. “If they weren’t walking it, nobody would be walking it.”

But the issue of giving reserves greater responsibility can be touchy with police unions. Myers said the recent shift in Oxnard’s policy on reserves has drawn concern from union members.

Statewide, departments are prohibited from using reserve officers to fill a full-time officer’s position. But reserves can be paired with full-time officers who would otherwise work their beat alone.

While Sunday’s graduation marked an accomplishment for the class as a whole, there were singular stories of achievement.

Adams was sworn in before graduation as a reserve officer for the Simi Valley Police Department. One of only two cadets to have a won a job so far, Adams graduated with a gun in her holster and a badge pinned to her dark blue police uniform.

For her, attending the academy meant working late-night shifts at the Simi Valley Police Department, where she is a civilian employee. And it meant spending less time with her husband and three sons.

“We talked a lot on the phone,” she said. “Otherwise, we were forever ships passing in the night.”

Being sworn in Sunday by a Simi Valley captain was “icing on the cake,” she said.

Lee Hintlian stood out from other members of the graduating class. Besides being the oldest cadet in the class, Hintlian, 46, was not looking for a career in police work.

“I wanted to donate my time to my community as a reserve officer,” said Hintlian, who will continue his job as a field deputy for Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson.

Taking notes and passing the written exams never concerned Hintlian. It was the physical-fitness test he worried about.

When the academy began, Hintlian could do only three pushups and couldn’t finish the obstacle course. But after five months of training, he had lost 33 pounds, could do 60 pushups and passed the fitness test with flying colors.

On Sunday, Hintlian was given an award honoring the most improved cadet.

“I was really proud of myself,” he said, lining up with the other cadets before the ceremony. “It represents the accomplishment of a personal challenge.”