Friday, October 5, 2007

An encouraging word

Sam Hicks spent the day with me yesterday. He's a 15 year-old sophomore at East High School. Sam was doing a job shadowing assignment for his Career Education class. We had a great time. Sam basically learned that my job is about answering calls, responding to emails, going to meetings, and talking to people all over the place. We made it to the 0730 and 1430 lineups at HQ and at Center Team, hit the morning staff meeting and the media briefing, and dashed over to the Northeast Team Station, where Sgt. Tom Towle took the time to show Sam the plethora of gear and equipment in the Team's inventory.

We had a couple important meetings, the most interesting of which was probably our hiring review panel. For 90 minutes or so we reviewed the first of three groups of applicants for our January recruit class. Sam got a first-hand look at the kinds of things employers are looking for: solid transcripts, stable employment records, bilingual skills, clean records, good life experiences and so forth.

I was expected at the Mayor's Office for a news interview about graffiti in Lincoln at 1300 hours, and I told the reporter from KOLN TV that the only way she'd get an interview with me was if she made sure Sam somehow got in the frame. She graciously and cleverly assisted in getting Sam a cameo appearance on the news, deep, in the background.

A day like this reassures you that the world turns, and that young people today are just as smart, capable, funny, and enjoyable as ever.

Come to think of it, I had two doses of this youthful optimism during the week, the other at Dr. Miriam DeLeone's Criminal Justice 101 Class on Wednesday. I told the students there that I was in the exact same class 34 years ago, taught by Dr. Roy Roberg, and it was the original stimulus that got me thinking about policing as a potential career.

Good luck on that car, Sam.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hay there are no posted daily police calls posted for today at
http://www.lincoln.ne.gov/city/police/stats/cfsthu.htm

wednesdays expanded details are very interesting and should be kept in that form to give us readers more insight into your work you do every day

Tom Casady said...

Whoops, looks like the conniculator became disconnected from the confabulator. I'll talk to my crack Information Technology Unit. Thanks1

Anonymous said...

I must confess to being somewhat incident-log-addicted myself, most particularly the "today so far" calls.

The incident/call log is highly appreciated, and shows Lincolnites that it's not such a sleepy little city after all. Same goes for the incident map - I really like it.

Anonymous said...

The expanded details are great. Not only are they interesting to read--it's nice to know what's going on around town.

Anonymous said...

The chief has posted some babble...what is a Conniculator? Confabulator?

Anonymous said...

The "today so far" call expanded details aren't showing up for 10-6 either. This is usually due to maladjustification of the veeblfitzer's cragification circuitry.

Tom Casady said...

Well, drat, you're right. Fixing the conniculator must have discombobulated the veeblfitzer. I'll get the crack I.T. staff cracking on it, but it might have to wait until Monday. Hopefully we can get this settled down after a few days. You know how beta testing goes!

Anonymous said...

Thanks, the veeblefitzer design is pretty new tech, and still has some bugs to iron out, but DARPA is on it.

Speaking of young Mr. Hicks, did you encourage him to sign up for the Citizen Academy?

Anonymous said...

The reason that it didn't work for the first part of the 6th is because the computer system was down for software updating, and no data was being added for the day.