Eve Marx

Word Count 1012

The first class of the Civilian Police Academy met in a dingy city council room attached to police headquarters. Over the next eight weeks, my fellow attendees and I would tour the county jail, meet police chiefs, a sheriff, a district attorney, an internet and sex crimes detective, the medical examiner, a fish and wildlife officer, a canine officer and his handler. We would spend a night with dispatch and 911, reenact the investigation of a major crime scene and spend a day studying firearms simulation training films, followed by a half day at the range. In the application process, I had disclosed my journalism background, arguing the academy training could only enhance my work. In the interest of full disclosure, I added I was writing a novel and thought of the class as research. When I passed  the application process, I was dizzy with excitement. 

During the course I learned a lot of things I didn’t know about police work despite having dated a cop and having been a police reporter for two decades. I learned mental health — the officers’ mental health — was a priority. Being exposed to some of the worst examples of human nature day after day takes a toll. Apparently, a large number of cops suffer from depression. I learned every corrections officer in my jurisdiction has been schooled in the psychological technique of cognitive behavioral therapy to reduce ugly confrontations with inmates. I learned seatbelt enforcements and DUI arrests are grant-funded. I learned every law enforcement agency in my county is desperately understaffed. It isn’t unusual for dispatchers – they answer the phone when you call 911 – to work back-to-back double shifts. I learned which drugs were being abused and illegally sold in my community, notably hallucinogens, ketamine, GHB (the date rape drug) and carfentanil, the latest iteration of fentanyl, which arrives here from Mexico and Canada in the form of little blue pills believed to be 10,000 times more potent than morphine and 100 times more potent than ordinary fentanyl. A primary reason for its popularity is its  cheap price– $2 and $3 a pill. It was originally developed and sold under the brand name Wildnil for zoo veterinarians to anesthetize elephants and rhinos. 

The real draw of the class for me was interacting with the cops. I’m not going to lie, I thought their jobs were sexy hot. My favorite was the sheriff with a master’s degree in criminal justice who had also been a narcotics canine handler; deputy medical examiner and a member of the sniper team. Another favorite was the state trooper assigned to be the fish and wildlife law enforcer, who proudly showed off an enormous collection of stuffed and mounted bodies of coyotes, foxes, elk and deer he used as decoys. 

My fellow students were an interesting bunch. The young twenty somethings were interested in careers in law enforcement. A middle aged woman who owned a cleaning service told me she was taking the class in hopes of persuading the department to award her  a cleaning contract. Another woman identified herself as a reporter but when I looked her up, I saw that the last time she’d written anything for a newspaper was five years earlier. She behaved like a reporter, asking a lot of questions, too many questions. On the night we were supposed to tour the county lock up, she’d used up all our time with questions, which pissed a bunch of people off. An elderly woman who always sat in the front row said she found the class so entertaining she’d taken it three times. 

Our final class was the taser presentation. We met with an officer who had worked for Axon, the company credited with developing police-grade electroshock weapons. We learned a new line of tasers had just come on the market delivering up to 10 shocks at a time because two were not enough when dealing with deranged fentanyl users. Cops I’d worked with as a reporter in the past told me getting tased is the most excruciating five seconds of pain you can imagine. “I cried like a baby,” one cop said. Another said he’d shit his pants. 

Two of my classmates volunteered to be tased. The woman volunteer studied law enforcement at a community college and exuded confidence. The other was a gentle, soft-looking guy who’d already completed the community college program. He spoke with enthusiasm about his future, not sure if he’d pursue investigative work or a career working narcotics, or might he be happiest as a community resource officer? He'd recently been accepted into the real police academy where getting tased was a requirement. He said he’d rather take the shot in the safe space of our civilian classroom than face possible humiliation before his fellow academy recruits, in case he screamed or fell apart.

A tased person immediately collapses. To prevent accidental injury, the volunteers were told to lie face down on thick rubber mats. They were advised to breathe deeply and try to stay relaxed. I watched in horror as they were shot, bang bang, one right after another. She screamed; he grunted. Afterwards, she lay perfectly still as if dead. His body spasmodically twitched and writhed. Tasers work by incapacitating muscle function for five seconds, giving an officer only moments to restrain a person with handcuffs.    

Less than a minute after being shot, both volunteers got to their feet. That was awful, the woman said, her face glowing. Anyone could see she was proud of her experience. She’d invited her parents to attend and take photos she could later post to Instagram. By contrast, the man appeared shaken and left without saying a word.

At the graduation ceremony at city hall, I shook the hands of the officers who instructed me and  was given a diploma. I wore my civilian police academy tee shirt. I still wasn’t sure what parts of what I learned might make it into my novel. The tased young man didn’t show up for graduation. For many weeks afterwards, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. 

Eve is a journalist and author currently scraping out a tiny living crafting police reports for newspapers in New York and Oregon. She is the author of What’s Your Sexual IQ?, The Goddess Orgasm, 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Sex and other titles bearing some relation to her stint editing Penthouse Forum and other ribald publications. She makes her home in a rural seaside community near Portland, OR with her husband, R.J. Marx, a jazz saxophonist, and Lucy, their dog child.