Course Trains Teenagers in the Realities of Police Work

They march on command, speak in police codes and know how to draft suspicious-persons reports. They have responded to calls for help, secured mock crime scenes and watched real-life arrests.

As the last weeks of school wind down before graduation and summer break, 14 Ventura County high school seniors and one junior are hoping to get a head start on their careers: They are learning how to be cops.

For the last nine weeks, the 17- and 18-year-old students from across the county have met midweek and on weekends in classrooms at the old Oxnard High School for a military-style program that teaches the realities of a public-safety job--such as the piles of paperwork--and works to dispel myths about big salaries and constant action.

More than 25 students signed up in early March but only 15 survived. They proudly wear uniforms of dark pants, shined shoes and starched blue polo shirts emblazoned with the words “YOUTH ACADEMY.”

Meet the maiden class of the Cops N Jocks Youth Academy, the latest and boldest effort of the Cops N Jocks program, headquartered in Santa Paula.

Since 1991, Cops N Jocks, an award-winning national crime-prevention program, has matched officers with high school athletic teams in an attempt to build relationships between teens and officers.

The academy, promoted through high school career counseling offices, runs on a shoestring budget of $3,000 in donations and the volunteer efforts of local cops.

Academy instructors say the first class is a success.

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“Some of the students really thought that law enforcement officers just walk around the streets, wear a badge and carry a gun, or that we’re out driving a car 120 miles per hour all the time. I think this has opened their eyes a little bit,” said Cops N Jocks staff member Chad Ragan, a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy.

Although similar in physical training aspects to junior military and explorer-type programs, the academy also offers lectures and hands-on training by officers from state and federal law enforcement agencies.

“We’re policemen, not just teachers,” said academy volunteer Jason Stevens, also a sheriff’s deputy. “What we are trying to do is help them make or reinforce a [career] decision. I mean, some people think the CHP just drives up and down the freeway.”

“It’s not like it is on TV,” said St. Bonaventure High School senior Brian Conley, 18.

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Conley, a fourth-year varsity football player, said the most interesting part of the training was an exercise staged in a parking lot in which students drove a real squad car to a mock crime scene, told a dispatcher they were “1097,” or on the scene, and then got to run a records check.

Marching, and the push-ups that follow if a student errs in a turn or step, is demanding, he said.

“It made us work as a team. It really, really got the class together,” Conley said.

While walking through the county’s jail facility on Todd Road on a recent Saturday, one of several tours the class took, Rio Mesa High School senior Myra Perez, 18, said joining the academy had been a bit daunting socially.

“My friends think I’m crazy,” said Perez, one of only two female students in the class. She said she hopes to work for the Oxnard Police Department.

She peeked inside a small jailhouse room filled with pictures of gang logos drawn by inmates. And during an earlier tour of a criminal courtroom, Perez practiced how to testify as an officer. She admitted she was extremely nervous on the witness stand just trying to answer simple questions about herself.

For 18-year-old Charity Wing, a senior at Camarillo High School, the choice has become clear.

“My dad’s in the military, and I really didn’t want all of that constant discipline. I like the law, so it was a choice of either becoming a cop or a lawyer,” Wing said during an open house held outside the Ventura Police Department on Saturday.

Wing, like nearly all of the other cadets, wants to remain in the county during her career. She hopes to join the Sheriff’s Department, one of several agencies that presented lectures to the group. The students also heard from local police, the FBI, the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, Secret Service and specialized units within those agencies.

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“The Sheriff’s Department just seems more spread out in the county and they seem very community-involved,” Wing said.

So this Friday, while their friends watch videos, play ball or just hang out, academy members will graduate in a ceremony that will be attended by their families and some of the county’s top law enforcement officers.

“These kids are to be commended for their endurance,” said Cops N Jocks founder Rich Randolph, a reserve officer for the Santa Paula Police Department. “Because of it, we’ve had a lot of people become interested, and so the youth academy will continue.”

Randolph said the Cops N Jocks board was impressed enough by the first class that the group is considering twice-yearly classes, scholarship programs and expanded training.