Westside Story Newspaper – Online The News of The Empire – Sharing the Quest for Excellence
Publisher’s commentary, by Wallace J. Allen
We all know the general effect when a driver “sees” a police car. The driver tends to “check” himself in terms of speed and general alertness. As we all agree with that statement, pay particular attention to the fact that the police car could be empty.
We can provide the same effect with Police Trainee’s patrolling and adding to the visual police presence in our cities. This would create a means to place additional, low or no cost uniformed bodies in, for instance, the city of San Bernardino. They are not full-fledged police officers, but who can tell that from a distance? Patrolling and calling in could be an additional deterrent as could other citizen-plus duties that they could perform.
Though this idea works conceptually, the specifics will have to be negotiated. The negotiation could be made much easier if the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Regional Training Academy would add an internship component to its training curriculum. This would give the trainees an obvious benefit to have a real on-the-streets experience to increase his/her value for their future job search; It would also give added value to the academy training reputation and resulting appeal to potential students as well; and additional value will be created for cash-strapped cities like San Bernardino whose Public Safety Budget would find relief in both providing and paying for Public Safety by utilizing the intern-officers.
