Walk a Mile in My Shoes
February 11, 2009
You’ve all heard this saying before, that until you walk a mile in another person’s shoes, you don’t know what they are going through. Well let’s take the old adage and see what you would do if you were the police officer in the following situation. Figure out what you would do with the following facts.
You’re on the way back to the station at the end of your shift. You pass a speeding car with busted taillights. You can’t see the license plate, but at the rate the idiot is traveling he could be an accident looking for a place to happen. You whip around and follow the car, light bar flashing and siren on whoop/yelp. You call in for back up and put your foot down to catch up to the car as it speeds off into the night.
Three blocks later you see the car jumped up on the curb and wrapped around a telephone pole. The driver of the car is hanging out the driver’s side window looking rather worse for wear with a great deal of blood pouring from his head wounds. As you approach the car, you notice a small child in the back seat. On the seat next to the diaper bag is a small square parcel, wrapped in brown paper. Next to the parcel is a sprung open brief case loaded with money.
The driver is coming to and you can’t see his hands below the smashed-in window. He is yelling that you had no right to chase him and cause him to have an accident. He is quite obviously under the influence of something.
How would you respond if you were the police officer arriving at this scene? How would your process it and why? These are answers that will give you an insight into how you think and feel about the kind of information you deducted from the incident above. What conclusions would you draw from the above facts and why?
Write down your responses and see if you run across anything similar on the B-PAD simulations. While the B-PAD simulations give you an idea of what types of situations a police officer faces every day, and allows you to respond, it doesn’t always allow you to take the time to think and write down what you think and why. The B-PAD allows you to respond verbally.
In taking the time to write down how you would respond, it gives you insight into your analytical thinking processes. This is precisely the kind of thinking you need to pass your police entrance exam, the PATI. If you want help learning how to get ready for your police PATI then check out the one stop police portal Police Ready. Not only will it get you ready to take those entrance exams, it will teach you how to think the right way and respond intuitively to situations like the one above.
