To most, Saturdays are a day for relaxation and rejuvenation from a long week of work. For Department of Public Safety Officers Chris Rouse and Kent Abbott, this is hardly the case. @@http://police.uoregon.edu/content/public-safety-officers-graduate-reserve-academy@@
Rouse and Abbott recently completed the reserve academy training course at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg — a course which meets every Saturday for nine months. @@http://www.umpqua.edu/police-reserve-academy@@
The course is a requirement for all DPS safety officers, according to a press release on the DPS website.
Rouse, a veteran in law enforcement, has been with DPS for 12 years. Prior to his University involvement, he served in the U.S. Air Force and in the Department of Corrections. He said the goal of the academy is to make officers sharper.
“With anything you do, if you’re not doing it daily, you’re going to slowly lose that information that you have learned,” Rouse said.
Rouse said the academy stretched candidates mentally and physically on a regular basis.
“We spent an hour at the beginning of each day for physical training, usually a two-mile run and then some sort of cross training,” Rouse said. “We also took a weekly test which covered a wide range of law enforcement issues.”
The course varied in its training, with firearms practice to even a full training day in the water.
“We practiced how to handle a suspect in the water. It’s not something you come across every day, but you have to be ready for anything,” Rouse said.
According to Rouse, the information learned at the academy is crucial to every DPS officer.
“Laws keep evolving as the years go by; improvements to laws are made and so every year officers must learn these additions,” Rouse said. “You have to be on your ‘A’ game at all times, and this training helps keep officers sharp.”