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Photograph by George Sakkestad
Chris Wencel, a senior at Los Gatos High School, practices handcuffing Jonathan Abrahamson of San Jose in the Metropolitan Education District's law enforcement class.
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Busted! High school students on patrol
The long arm of the law is reaching into schools
By Rebecca Ray
A patrol car flashed its lights as it pulled over a car in front of the Central County Occupational Center in San Jose. Out of the patrol car came a teenage girl wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a belt with a gun tucked into the holster. She approached the driver of the other car and asked to see his license and registration.
The girl is a student of the Metropolitan Education District (MetroED) law enforcement program for local high school juniors and seniors. The class is open to students in six local high school districts, including the Campbell Union and Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School districts.
The girl was participating in a simulation on traffic enforcement.
"[The class is] different--unique, definitely--but really good," says 17-year-old Chris Wencel, a senior at Los Gatos High School. "I've never heard of or experienced anything like this before."
The teacher, Rico Sciaky, a reserve deputy with the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, who has 14 years of law enforcement experience, says he tries to make the class as real as possible.
Nothing the students do is routine. In what's called the firearms training room, students watch videos that depict various scenarios. They never know what the people in the videos will do. During each scenario, they must decide whether to use force and whether to pull out their 9-millimeter laser guns and shoot. (They never use real guns with bullets.)
During traffic enforcement simulations, the students never know whether the drivers they pull over are in on the simulation. The students also don't know if the drivers will have weapons or drugs, and must call in on their radios to see if the drivers have warrants.
Students sometimes practice telling drivers why they pulled them over during these simulations. They also practice searching and handcuffing them.
Students even do real police work. The parking enforcement team hands out parking citations, while the emergency response team (ERT) responds to medical emergencies. ERT students meet with the firefighters and paramedics who arrive on the scene and escort them to the victim.
The students even look like law enforcement officers. They wear uniforms on classroom instruction days, which usually occur three times each week. Like most of the students, Wencel wears a uniform that looks like a regular police officer's uniform.
ERT students wear T-shirts that say "Emergency Response Team" on them and pants called BDUs.
Typically, on the other two weekdays, students wear T-shirts and sweats; do calisthenics, pushups, and sit-ups; run about a quarter-mile; and practice what they have learned during classroom instruction.
One student even has a paid position in private security. Six other students are volunteer cadets with the San Jose Police Department and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office.
As in real law enforcement agencies, students can move up in rank. Positions as sergeant, lieutenant and captain open up, and students apply for them by taking oral and written exams. As part of the selection process, Sciaky also considers how well applicants get along with others.
Whenever a visitor walks into the classroom, a student captain calls, "Attention," and every student stops what he or she is doing. Then they all say, "Law enforcement" in unison. The point of this practice--which is the norm at police academies--is to develop discipline and self-respect in the students, as well as teach them to show respect for others, Sciaky says.
The class is essentially a police academy for teenagers--one must be at least 21 to join a police academy.
MetroED students practice defensive maneuvers on mats and learn how to execute these moves without injuring themselves or others.
Sciaky sometimes wears a RedMan suit, which consists of a helmet with a face cage to protect the head, and pieces of foam covered with red plastic to protect other body parts. Students practice hitting him with a foam baton to learn when and where they can strike others.
MetroED students learn to use police jargon, take fingerprints, investigate crimes and traffic accidents, take reports, and memorize codes. Wencel says he likes to learn about the laws, because it's useful for citizens to know their rights and what officers can and can't do to them.
In order to graduate the yearlong class, MetroED students, like actual law enforcement officers, must be able to pull 165 pounds of dead weight 32 feet. To prepare for this feat, they practice on a dummy.
MetroED students receive certificates of completion and letters of competency from the school once they graduate--just as police academy students do.
Although MetroED students complete little more than half the blocs that are required of police academy students, and have 540 hours of instruction instead of 870, they learn essentially the same material and use the same code books.
By the time the MetroED students graduate, Sciaky says, they have the knowledge necessary to be law enforcement officers. According to Sciaky, the students have another advantage, as well, in that they grew up in and are familiar with local neighborhoods.
For these reasons, he says, his students are an "untapped resource" for local law enforcement agencies.
Although one must be at least 21 to work full time for a law enforcement agency, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office actively recruits officers from the MetroED program. Aspiring officers younger than 21 typically volunteer as interns.
MetroED regularly surveys students in its high school districts about their interests, and students identified law enforcement as a high-interest area.
Another reason was the high demand for law enforcement officers. Not only do many law enforcement agencies have open positions, but private security has become even more in demand since Sept. 11.
Law enforcement agencies are especially interested in recruiting women, since men have traditionally dominated the field. And they may be successful--out of the 57 students in Sciaky's two sessions, 60 percent are female.
Wencel says he'd like to work in private security and then attend the FBI academy. He says he's thinking of eventually becoming an investigator or working in counterespionage. He recommends the class to anyone who's interested in law enforcement.
To enroll in the MetroED class, students must have earned at least average grades, and cannot have failed any classes, been arrested or convicted of any crimes.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
