My Exploration

The one thing that stood out to me while I was observing/participating this last Tuesday was that I didn’t realize how many different things the officer I went with was involved it. I had no idea that little old Boise, Idaho had its own SWAT team. That is crazy to me, because you never hear anything about them on the news or in the newspapers. They kind of keep to themselves about the careers. Also a lot of the police officers on the Boise SWAT Team are involved with narcotics and drug dogs. These police officers don’t usually pull people over for speeding and they usually don’t respond to small calls, like complaints against neighbors and what not. These officers handle the big stuff!
A lot of questions come to mind when I was on my observation. A few questions I actually asked him as I thought of them. A few were, How often do you let people ride along with you? And the answer to that was none, unless for favors. I was the first people that the officer had in a really long time. Which was kind of cool that they don’t do that a lot. Other questions that I have for a future interview are, What types of dogs do you look for when you chose them to teach. How often do you get called out? How often do you train? What is the most common thing you get called out for? What kinds of things do you do for fun, and so on.
Details that seem interesting to me is all of the training they have to go through. I don’t know yet how much but I know that they have to work out all the time to be about to stay fit. Most of their equipment weights 40 to 50 pounds on top of their body weight. Also I want to know how long it takes to train a dog to do what they do. I know dogs naturally have a great sense of smell but how do you teach them to look for certain scents. Another detail is I always wonder what there personal life is like? Do there family support them, is it a hard job to keep a family with a job like this?
There are a lot of things that I want to learn about this job field, mainly because I want to go into this job field eventually. I want to know what the qualifications are of doing what all of these people do. Another thing I want to learn is what other jobs are in this area, and do women get to work in these fields.
What surprises me about my observations was how much he shared with me and what all he let me see, like all of his drugs, he even let me smell some of the drugs. Also he showed me their department where they do all of there training. He also showed me all of the cool things his dog can do. He pulled people over (for a purpose not just for fun) I was able to see the dog search a car that could potentially have drugs in it. I almost saw some people get arrested.
I can’t wait till my next observation! It’s going to be a blast!