Photograph by George Sakkestad
Joel Rainville of Prospect High School practices handcuffing fellow Prospect junior James Carson during the Metropolitan Education District's law enforcement class.
Busted! High school students on patrol
The long arm of the law 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 female in sweat pants and a T-shirt.
The girl also wore 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 Metropolitan Education District's 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.
"We don't always know what we're getting ourselves into, which is what makes it fun," said Joel Rainville, 16, a junior at Prospect High School who lives in San Jose.
The teacher, Rico Sciaky, a reserve deputy with the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office with 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 or whether they have no clue what's going on. 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, such as if someone on campus collapses. ERT students meet with the firefighters and paramedics who arrive on the scene and escort them to the victim.
One of the members of the emergency response team is James Carson, another junior from Prospect, who says he enjoys the work.
Carson, also from San Jose, says he applied for the team because the uniforms are cooler than the police officer uniforms that most of the other students wear. Like real ERT officers, ERT students wear T-shirts that say "Emergency Response Team" on them and pants called BDUs.
The students wear their uniforms on classroom instruction days, which usually occur three times each week. 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 learned during classroom instruction.
One student even has a paid position working in private security. Six other students are volunteer cadets with the San Jose Police Department and 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. 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. This practice, which is done at police academies, is to show discipline and respect, as well as give the students a feeling of respect for themselves, Sciaky says.
The class is essentially a police academy for young adults. One must be at least 21 to join a police academy.
MetroED students practice defensive maneuvers on mats and learn how to execute them without injuring themselves or others.
Sciaky sometimes wears a RedMan suit, and students practice hitting him with a foam baton to learn when and where they can strike others. The RedMan suit 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.
MetroED students learn police jargon, memorize codes and learn how to take fingerprints, investigate crimes and traffic accidents, and take reports.
As real law enforcement officers must be able to do, MetroED students must be able to pull 165 pounds of dead weight 32 feet to graduate the year-long class. 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 Police Academy students do and complete 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 already know what they need to know to be law enforcement officers, instead of having to learn on the job.
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 people 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. Typically, before aspiring officers turn 21, they do volunteer internships.
Before MetroED officials began the class last school year, the high demand for law enforcement officers was one factor they considered. 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 targeting females, since males have traditionally dominated the field.
Out of the 57 students in Sciaky's two sessions, 60 percent of them are female.
MetroED, which regularly surveys students in its high school districts about their interests, also created the law enforcement class in response to a survey, where students identified law enforcement as a high-interest area.
Although Rainville originally enrolled in the class because it sounded fun, he says he is now seriously considering a career in criminal justice and obtaining a law degree.
Carson, who says he doesn't want a job where he works behind a desk all day, agrees. He says that working in the FBI or CIA would be "awesome."
"This is the best class," Carson said.
However, Rainville says, although he would "definitely" recommend the class, law enforcement is not for everyone. Some students drop out of the field after having to fire guns in the firearms training simulator, Sciaky adds.
To enroll in the MetroED class, students must receive average grades and cannot have failed any classes, been arrested or convicted of any crimes.
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