Mt. Lebanon police host citizens’ academy
Pat Hughes gets a hands-on demonstration with a rifle.
Mock M-16s are used to demonstrate proper rifle safety and firing procedures.
Training citizens at the last Mt. Lebanon citizens’ police academy became sort of a family affair for Corporal James Hughes, as his mother, Pat, was right alongside 15 others firing handguns and M-16s.
“I didn’t like the shooting. But everything else – especially the fingerprint dusting – was very interesting,” she said.
Pat Hughes said her son didn’t convince her to sign up, but that she had an inherent interest in police work as her husband was also an officer.
“I just wanted to see what it’s like to be in law enforcement. The scope of their training was very impressive,” she said.
Corporal Hughes is looking for about 24 residents to come out for a nine-week training course that starts March 3, with one three-hour class each Tuesday evening. This will be the 11th academy police have hosted since starting the program in 1998. This is an odd year, technically speaking, meaning those who don’t sign up this year will have to wait until 2017.
“We’ve been alternating with the fire department. They do even years (hosting a citizens training program) and we take the odd years,” said Hughes.
“The idea is to get people familiarized with police procedure. We do a crime scene scenario, some mock investigations, K-9 work, simulated traffic stops, processing scenes and fingerprinting,” he said. “And most of the time, we get those who are comfortable or have a positive view of law enforcement. It’s easier to work with that type of mindset, but it’s also an invitation to those who may be skeptical of how we operate and may just generally have a bad opinion about cops.”
A graduate of the 2013 academy said he learned crime scene investigators have to train themselves not to fall for red herrings and confirmation bias. “The week that we did crime scene investigations was very fun, very intensive. You watch TV and say, ‘I can figure this out.’ Well, it’s tough,” said Jim Martin. “Only half of the group pieced together the situation with the actors and the documents and all the evidence.”
Alex Parrish had the academy program on his radar for the past decade, but finally committed last time.
“They communicated very well how it’s different to be a police officer versus any other type of citizen in a community,” he said. “And they showed that despite perceptions of Mt. Lebanon being a pleasant community where nothing bad happens, they deal with crime just like any other department.”
“The drug situation,” he continued, “it’s tied to traffic that goes through the community. The seminar on traffic stops showed how much trouble is carried through the community just in routine stops. And they showed how the historical perception of heroin is no longer the jazz guys shooting up outside the club. It’s anyone who’s between paychecks and loses access to their usual stock of pills,” he said.
Most revealing, Parrish said, was a candid seminar on the use of deadly police force.
“They explained a situation that if an officer is grappling with a drunk on the ground and that person goes for the officer’s gun, then that is justifiable use of force. Because of the proximity and the nature of the struggle, that officer has moments to decide if his life is in danger,” Parrish said.
The biggest takeaway for Parrish was that Mt. Lebanon police are a community-oriented department.
“The message we all heard was, ‘If you call, we will send someone.’ In other Pittsburgh neighborhoods, if you call 911 with a complaint of ‘someone is outside or close to my house,’ they might not send a car. They made clear that they’ve instructed dispatchers to get a Mt. Lebanon officer out on a call every time.”
For more information or to apply to the citizens’ academy, visit www.mtlebanonpd.org.