More than Guns

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My final project evolved throughout the entire time I was putting it together. I got the idea while putting together my beat book, I covered police, fire, and S.U. Department of Public Safety. It was while I was getting my information on D.P.S. that I got my idea, I met with the media representative for the department and while he was answering my questions he mentioned that the department was looking into becoming a police department. I decided to do my story on that process. Once I started to put my interviews together I had trouble getting someone from D.P.S. to talk to me but decided to set up interviews with other schools that had police departments any way. Once I got back from break I talked to people from departments at Western Kentucky University, Cornell, SUNY ESF, UNH, a student at UNH, and I also contacted Bowling Green and the University of Texas at El Paso but they never got back to me. When I finally heard from someone from D.P.S I found out that the media rep. had been wrong, they weren't looking into becoming a police department but into getting accredited. I started looking for other schools that had accredited departments but I couldn't find any. The next day when I met with Mike Rathbun at S.U. D.P.S he explained that was because only about 5% of schools have accredited departments. Rathbun set me up with another interview with lieutenant Vernon Thompson later in the week to explain accreditation some more.
When we pitched our topics in class Andrew suggested that I try to do a ride-a-long with an officer, I thought this was a great idea so I set one up. The ride-a-long was a great experience and I got some great sound. I rode with officer John Day and couldn't have asked for a better officer. He was a member of the first class to complete the academy to get Peace Officer status which the department switched to in 2005 (thats the class in the picture). He talked about how hard it had been, both physically and academically, especially because he was older. He told me that two people didn't make it from his class. He went on to talk about all the advantages of the status and my story changed again, to a how are things going so far with peace officer status piece. Peace officer status was the focus of my interview on that Friday with Lieutenant Thompson. I started looking for other schools with peace officer status but was having trouble finding them and since it was the weekend I couldn't get in touch with anyone so I started writing.
I wasn't very happy with the story I gave to Prof. Nicholson to look over, it seemed kind of boring. He gave me the idea to have the story follow the ride-a-long. I loved the idea. He also wanted me to tie in more schools with peace officer status so I emailed Thompson and someone from the state to get some names. When they got back to me it was already Wednesday afternoon so I just started calling everyone on the lab phone. Unfortunately only one of the schools Lieutenant Thompson gave me actually had peace officer status and none of the schools the state gave me got back to me. I was out of time so I started to put it together.
I am really happy with the way the piece came together with the music, sound, and ride-a-long theme. I also hope that I got across that D.P.S. officers are more than rent-a-cops or "Barney Fifes" , they go through some pretty intense training and really care about the safety of the students.