Cadets Begin Training Under Fire : Law enforcement: First class of 1994 gets under way at the Ventura County Sheriff’s Academy. They face six months of tough training.

Barely three days into their training Wednesday, 45 police cadets still flinch and blush during weapons drills at Senior Deputy Paul Higgason’s grating roar of a voice.

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“You should be getting this by now!” Higgason bellows as the Ventura County Sheriff’s Academy cadets struggle to reholster their new 9-millimeter pistols.

Elsewhere in the formation, hard-nosed drill instructors snarling over them, two cadets crank out 10 pushups apiece in penance for minor foul-ups with their guns.

Then, the cadets rush inside at double time to bolt down a 10-minute lunch, squeeze in a 5-minute bathroom stop and then hunker over desks for a two-hour lecture on crime-report writing.

Once they are out of sight, Senior Deputy Jeff Miller shakes his head mildly at the cadets’ struggle with the simple task of presenting arms for inspection.

“Phew. . . . They’re doing OK. This part’s hard because they haven’t had inspection of arms before,” he allowed. “They’re about on par with the other classes.”

These 42 men and three women, age 19 to 47, are the first class of 1994--about an average number, said Sgt. Stephen DeCesari, who helps run the Ventura County Sheriff’s Training Academy.

Seven cadets came from sheriff’s departments in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, but the rest are training for the coveted jobs they have won in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, he said.

They face six months of tough physical training, boot camp drills and intense classroom studies--ranging from ethics and law to explosives and high-speed driving. They will write reports on every single mistake they make, to hone their writing skills and ensure they will not have to learn the same things twice.

And they will be tested repeatedly. Those who flunk five or more of the 37 exams will be fired.

“We hold them to a higher standard,” DeCesari said. “We ask them to put their personal life on hold for six months.”

Those who graduate in September will be products of one of the highest-ranked police academies in California, according to state test scores.

And when that day comes, the newest Ventura County sheriff’s deputies will march all their hopes and dreams straight into the Ventura County Jail, where they must work indoors for up to three years before any chance of patrol duty.

Why suffer the hardships of training?

“This is really a tremendous profession,” Chief Deputy Robert Brooks assures the cadets, closing a two-hour lecture on the ethical pitfalls of police work. “The public perception of us is very positive, they believe in us, they trust us, and it’s all because we’ve maintained that public trust very carefully.”

But with Brooks’ warm words still in their ears, the cadets march outside to a faceful of corrosive shouting from the drill instructors.

Someone has left the classroom lights on and the door open. Bad news.

“Rowland! Get over here!” Senior Deputy John Miller yells at the cadet corporal--the class leader of the moment. All the others will rotate through this duty, but right now Michael Rowland must take the heat for his fellow cadets’ failure.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong with that classroom?” Miller demands.

Stiff at attention, Rowland tries to answer while Senior Deputy Higgason dresses down the last cadet to leave the room. “I--I forgot sir,” she manages before Higgason lays into her again.

Then Miller delivers the lecture:

“When you first came up here, we told you, everything is for a reason, “ he says evenly. “You’ll learn that the reason you close the door and switch off the light is so you’ll not be silhouetted in a doorway, and once that door is closed, you’ll know you’ve already checked it and the room is secure!”

“You start developing your habits now,” Miller adds. “You remember the little things.” Then Miller faces Rowland again, the shiny black brims of their uniform caps just inches apart, Miller murmuring intensely at the rigid cadet.

Later, Rowland says he was shocked to face boot camp-style drills again several years after a four-year tour with the Marine Corps.

But he is resolved to graduate, to become a Ventura County deputy.

“Academically, I think it’s going to be a great deal tougher” than Marine training was, says Rowland, 27, of Agoura. “Physically, I find it a little bit easier. And the shouting--that’s just about equal.”

Classmate Danielle Delpit says the hard-core training shocked her too, but she is determined to become a sworn deputy.

“I’ve always witnessed crimes in my neighborhood, and I’ve always wanted to be someone who confronted that,” says Delpit, 23, of Agoura. After staying near the head of a pack of classmates sprinting up and down the street outside the academy near the Camarillo Airport, she admits: “I’ve never been through this. It’s hard .”

Hard, as in lessons that require at least two to three hours of studying per night.

Hard, as in two hours per day of calisthenics, and long-distance running.

Hard, as in no breaks or drinks between sets of pushups and 100-yard sprints.

At 19, Phillip Shannon is the youngest in the class and today the slowest, as he learns when he lags behind in running drills, withering beneath the sun and the instructors’ yells.

“I don’t know if I can do this any more,” he says between sprints, hinting he might quit and train by himself before trying again.

Shannon followed his older brother through as a sheriff’s cadet, filing records and working minor traffic accidents. But he was not ready, he says, for the physical grind.

“Come on, you’ll make it,” says his oldest classmate, 47-year-old Frank Seneris.

“I’ve always wanted to be a cop,” says Seneris, a sheriff’s corrections officer who hopes to move to patrol work. His desire “was intensified after watching all the crime rates growing” in Oxnard and nationwide, he says.

Age did not stop him, Seneris says.

“I’m 47 years old--whatever I do, I decide for my own,” he adds, breathing and sweating no harder than the toughest of his classmates. “My hope is to qualify and make it through. Hopefully, I’ll work as many years as I can--as long as I can physically do it.”