Citizens academy shows residents the perils of police work

Terrible noises filled the hallway Saturday morning under Cape Girardeau Central Junior High School during the second annual Citizens Police Academy.

“You done shot me!” yelled a man’s voice from one end of the hall. “I’m gonna kill you!”

“Somebody help!” yelled a woman from the other end.

Then there were the intermittent spurts of gunfire. But no one was in danger. It was only the sounds of 17 area residents being put through high-intensity simulations by members of the Cape Girardeau Police Department. The scenarios were based on what cops can reasonably expect to encounter on a given patrol.

In the room where the shots had come from, Sgt. Adam Glueck was critiquing the performance of Cape Girardeau County assistant prosecutor Angel Woodruff and Carol Childers, the latter whose Kevlar vest sported splatters of blue paint from the simulation 9mm handguns the participants used.

Brad McKlin plays a bad guy in a mock scenario with Carol Childers, right, and Angel Woodruff during the Citizens Police Academy on Saturday at Central Junior High School.Fred Lynch

Woodruff and Childers had been tasked with investigating an anonymous tip at a residence whose occupants became aggressive.

During the exercise, Childers had shot one subject in the leg and turned to help Woodruff subdue the other, but in kneeling to handcuff him, had set her sidearm on the ground. The “injured” subject crawled over, grabbed it and shot her three times.

“It’s OK,” Glueck assured them. “We expect you guys to not be good at this. That’s the whole point.”

“That was intense. It makes you have a great appreciation of what [police officers] do, which I already did,” Childers said, shaking her head. “Shot with my own gun.”

The participants completed eight stations over the course of the daylong training, one of which simulated an officer without backup encountering a man who had taken a woman hostage and was holding her at gunpoint.

Missy Phegley tries to control an unruly crowd gathered around an actor playing a drunk girl who passed out downtown during a scenario in the Citizens Police Academy on Saturday at Central Junior High School.Fred Lynch

Participant Roy Merideth came out of the simulation excited but shaken. He had drawn his gun when the subject had taken his hostage, but through a combination of negotiation and command presence, he had been able to talk him into handing over the gun.

“It felt like an eternity,” he said, “even though it was probably 30 seconds or less.”

Participant Patrick Koetting, on the other hand, came out of the simulation shot.

“Immediately, your heart rate is ... boom,” he said. “I’m obviously not going home tonight, or at least with a bunch of holes in me.”

Other scenarios included a suicidal person in a car and an intoxicated person passed out on the sidewalk with a crowd gathered.

Cape Girardeau Police Sgt. Darren Estes gives final instructions to participants in the Citizens Police Academy on Saturday at Central Junior High School.Fred Lynch

But the scenario that best illustrated the volatility and danger that can emerge during a call simulated an officer responding to a residence after concerned parents had reported their adult son as suicidal.

The first participant to try was Rocky Everett, a veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The subject emerged, immediately hostile and throwing chairs against the wall. Everett tried to subdue the subject without using a Taser or firearm, but when Everett pushed him against the wall, the subject produced a fake knife and stabbed him repeatedly.

Patrolman Mike Kidd explained what Everett did wrong.

“You have to get some distance between you and this guy,” Kidd said, signaling the actor to brandish the knife. “But when he’s done that, he’s bought and paid for.”

The purpose of the simulation was to illustrate what the law-enforcement community calls the 21-foot rule, which states in the roughly second-and-a-half it takes to draw and fire a weapon, the average assailant can make contact and possibly overwhelm an officer.

They had Everett and the subject test it in a sort of duel. On “go,” Everett drew and was able to squeeze off a shot, but it was glancing at best, and the subject’s momentum knocked him back against the wall.

The next participant, state Rep. Holly Rehder, nearly had her firearm wrestled away from her by the actress playing the subject’s mother, and when they tested the 21-foot rule, she didn’t even get her gun drawn in time. She said it gave her a better understanding of what police officers face.

Kidd said during the last year alone, Cape Girardeau police have responded to at least 21 analogous situations.

tgraef@semissourian.com

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