Editor’s Note: This is the final installment of a series of columns where Kate reflects on and documents her time in the Citizen’s Police Academy. However, she is not participating in the academy in her capacity as a reporter, but as a citizen of Covington.

Well, the Citizen’s Police Academy had officially ended. Though we’ll still be going before the city council on Monday for our graduation recognition, the instructional portions have all wrapped up.

Overall, I can say that it was a great experience. I learned a lot, and it gave me something to do on my Tuesday nights. I’ve now become familiar with several people in the police department and made myself somewhat of a familiar face. 

As a relative newcomer to Covington, making these connections is important to me both professionally and personally. As news editor, I now know more about the processes behind the CPD and can say ‘hello’ when I see officers at a city event. 

I understand more about everything that goes on between when someone places a call to 911 and how it goes through the call center and an officer gets dispatched. That’s already helped me at work when I’m sifting through an incident report or narrative to understand how the chain of events took place.

Personally, it can’t hurt to know some police in any city you live in. Just making those connections and feeling like your police officers aren’t total strangers to you is an obvious benefit.

The Citizen’s Police Academy was pretty hands-on, which I liked. We went through simulations and looked at mock crime scenes. One of my favorite activities was last Saturday, when we ended the course by going to the Covington Police Firearms Complex.

Several officers instructed us on how to properly handle and shoot a few different firearms. We primarily used a 9mm and a .22, but towards the end, we were all given the chance to fire a larger automatic gun (I’m not a gun aficionado, so I don't want to start throwing out words like “pistol” and “rifle” and such because I’m not confident I’d be using them correctly).

This was a very fun experience. We did a competition in two teams and were able to understand the importance of training, cause aiming isn’t as simple as you think.

Most people have probably fired some sort of gun at least once in their lives, myself included, so many of us are familiar with this already. But I’ll explain it anyway: Aiming isn’t as easy as ‘point and shoot.’

You can line everything up perfectly where your sight is perfectly on the bullseye, and then you squeeze the trigger…and you’re off by six inches.

So many factors go into aiming. One that an officer explained to us was that people will sometimes shift the nose of the firearm as they pull the trigger because they’ve reflexively tensed in anticipation of everything that comes with firing: The noise, the reverberations, the force, etc.

This is just one of numerous factors that go into proper aim. But it shows why police training is so important. If I can stand perfectly still, take 20 seconds lining up my sight, take a deep breath and still miss, imagine being in the high-pressure scenarios that officers are called to respond to, and having to be on your complete A-game.

This also shows just how inaccurate television can be. 

“Why don’t you just shoot the gun out of the guy’s hand as he was running at you?” I’m sorry, I’m not Floyd Lawton. Getting repetition and practice and training will do wonders for improving accuracy, form and overall execution, but shooting can still be difficult. Remember that television and comic books are fictional.

This was especially true of the automatic weapon. That thing was difficult to control. It exerts so much force that you really have to brace yourself to hold it still when you fire it. While we all took turns firing it, an officer kept a hand on to help steady the weapon while we shot it (which was especially helpful considering that several of us had never fired anything like it before and didn’t know what level of force to anticipate).

It was a very fun way to spend my Saturday morning. And it was also a nice send-off for the Citizen’s Police Academy.

When I first signed up for this experience, I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d be accepted. I made it clear where I worked and what I did on my application, and just hoped for the best. I tried to make it clear in every facet that I wouldn’t be approaching the experience as a reporter but as a normal person. 

But like many professions, it isn’t something that can be wholly shaken off. If I’d been walking down the hall and heard an officer loudly say something like “We just finally caught the guy that did [insert nefarious crime with significant public impact]!” I wouldn’t just be able to pretend like I hadn’t heard it. 

I was honestly hoping that nothing like that would happen so that I could just maintain normalcy, and thankfully, it didn’t (not that I’d expect officers to be just tossing info around, but I am in their office, so it’s not like they’re shouting it on the street for anyone to hear.)

However, with me authoring this here column series each week, it wasn’t long before my ‘cover’ was blown.

I’m joking, mostly. I never once lied about where I worked. But I wasn’t really advertising it either. I didn’t want to be singled out or have anyone think I was there to sneak off on tours and steal papers off desks on a witch hunt for skeletons on closets. 

Though I have an obligation to report when things happen, none of us here at The Covington News relishes delivering information that negatively affects people’s lives. But we understand that we have an obligation to inform the public when certain things happen, especially with public entities like a police department. 

This means that there’s been more than one occasion where we’ve put out stories that have painted a less-than-flattering image of the police. I don’t find joy in doing that, but I’m not sweeping things under the rug to avoid an awkward situation. 

Just like how if any of the officers whom I’ve gotten to know were to pull me over for speeding, I wouldn’t expect them to write it off because they know my name now. Though very different, we both have to do our respective jobs, even if it can get uncomfortable.

That being said, I wasn’t sure how they’d react to me signing up for the Citizen’s Police Academy. Sure, I knew my intentions weren’t to be a snoop, but they didn’t know that.

However, the experience was truly great. After I’d written a few columns, there were a few lighthearted jokes made, but always just in passing and never in a way that made me uncomfortable. Just the classing “shh, the news is here” or “is this going to make the story” remarks, all in a joking manner. 

So, all in all, the Citizen’s Police Academy was a great experience. I finished it with a greater understanding of what the police do and having made new relationships with people I didn’t know before. I really can’t recommend it enough to anyone with any curiosity about the police and what they do. 

Kate Verity is the news editor of The Covington News. She can be reached at kverity@covnews.com.