Media Police Academy

[Sgt. Bone]

Does anybody have information in reference to a Media Police Academy? It's the same idea as the Citizen Police Academy. I read about it some where and I need to learn more about it. I'm interested in conducting this academy at my agency. Thanks for all your help......Please Be Safe and God Bless America

[JoeNasty]

aw man, you don't really wanna have us hanging around, do you?!!!

honestly, i've never heard of a media police academy. i've participated in a couple fire dept. media days which were pretty informative. they set some old cars on fire and let us bash the windows in and tear the roofs off!!!

maybe you could let some of the prissy reporters shoot some guns on the firing range and let them drive some old cop cars on the practice course? that would give ya'll some kicks!!!

[Niteshift]

Why not just use the course plan for the citizens academy? Seems to me like it would work out about the same.

[Pigskin]

I was thinking about doing one of those, too. It would have to be a one-day event & try to acquiant the reporters with who does what at the Department & what the procedure is for giving out information. It could also give them information about what is needed by law enforcement in the way of PSA's & such. The media could also give law enforcement tips on submitting news articles & PSA's. You could give them a chance to ride with an officer for an hour or so & take them to the range to shoot in a shoot-or-don't-shoot situation (but don't try to trick them to look foolish). It could be a good thing because they don't teach that kind of stuff in journalism school.

[Niteshift]

I'll share a success story with you:

We had a reporter that was a real weiner (big suprise ) He was always bad-mouthing the cops and knew how to do our jobs better than we did.

We were doing a shoot/don't shoot training. Live actors, all scenarios where a cop was actually killed and all were survivable if you did the right things.

On the way to the first scenario, you walked an "alley" where you'd encounter a couple of random shooters/non-shooters, to get the adrenaline up.

This reporter showed up and we decided to let him go through. We put the body armor, hearing protection and glasses on him. You could already see his stress level rising.

Before he got through the alley, he'd been shot and shot an unarmed man. He started to hyper-ventilate. We had to catch the gun he was dropping and help him outside.

So, it was a success because we proved he was a big pu**y and that we were real men, right? No. It was a success because he learned how fast things happen, that it's not as easy as it looks on TV and that how things look when you're in the middle of them can be VERY different than how they look when you are hearing about it later.

From then on, we got some pretty balanced coverage from him.

[Sparky]

"No comment."

Sorry, I couldn't resist.