Policing Academy Graduates New Class

Fifty Valley residents graduated recently from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Community Police Academy and police are hoping they walked away with more than just a certificate.

“We hope people have a better understanding of what their Police Department does,” said Det. Woodrow Parks, who supervises the program.

The Community Police Academy, started in the Valley two years ago, is a 10-week program in which students learn everything from the LAPD’s use-of-force policy and communication system to the jail system and pursuit tactics.

At a graduation ceremony Saturday at the Mann Theatres in Granada Hills, LAPD Interim Chief Bayan Lewis said the classes gave police “the opportunity to create that synergistic relationship between community and police that community policing is all about.”

Three-hour classes were held every Wednesday night in a meeting room at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys. The students also took field trips to Parker Center and the Police Academy near Griffith Park.

Students go through the Firearm Training System, similar to a virtual-reality computerized game, where they are placed in simulated violent situations and have to decide what is the proper use of force and whether to shoot, Parks said. The students are given a toy gun; no real firearms are used.

One student, the Rev. Margie Ann Taylor-Black of Encino Community Church in Tarzana and also a member of the LAPD’s Crisis Response Team, said she was glad for the opportunity to learn more about the Police Department and encourages others to do the same.

“I think lack of information is the key to all misunderstanding,” Taylor-Black said. “I see the LAPD and our chief really working on that in really innovative ways. I don’t know of any other industry, including the church, that says, ‘We want to hear feedback.’ . . . I don’t know anybody else brave enough to do that.”