Officers brush up on their skills

By Denise Dick

One of the driving exercises required officers to quickly back out of a tight space.

CANFIELD — It looks so easy on television and in the movies.

But in reality, driving in dicey situations — getting out of a tight spot when danger crops up, navigating an S curve in reverse and hurrying through a series of tight turns — requires skill.

Boardman police officers are spending this week and next brushing up on their driving, defensive tactics and CPR skills and earning certification in the use of automatic external defibrillators.

Orange construction cones arranged according to Ohio Police Officers Training Academy standards marked off the required driving exercises Wednesday at the Canfield Fairgrounds.

Boardman police Sgt. Chuck Hillman, one of the instructors, said the reverse curve is the most challenging of the three driving exercises.

Cones are arranged in two rows to form a tight S curve. Each officer must maneuver the cruiser between the rows without striking a cone.

“It’s five points if you bump a cone; 10 points if you knock it over,” Hillman said. “For every second over, it’s one point off.”

Sixty seconds was allotted for the reverse curve.

The fast back simulates a situation in which an officer is driving down a narrow alley and is confronted with a dangerous situation, said Sgt. John Allsopp, another instructor.

“The officer has to create distance between himself and the danger,” he said.

Each driver is given 15 seconds to back out of the narrow, cone-lined area and drive to safety.

The other driving portion of the training is shuffle steering where the driver moves around a series of smaller turns in the 40-second allotted time period.

Rather than using hand over hand with your palms handling the steering as most of us do during normal driving, the officer keeps one hand on each side of the steering wheel and uses short shuffle motions to steer quickly.

Officers undergo similar training annually.

For defensive tactics, officers were to brush up on the proper use of pepper spray, collapsible batons and Tasers, Allsopp said.

The use of those tools isn’t a frequent occurrence.

Allsopp said that in 2006, the last year for which statistics are available, officers employed pepper spray 12 times and batons five times, Allsopp said.

In mid-2007, the department bought Tasers and since then, officers’ use of pepper spray and batons has gone down, he said.

The officers were scored and needed to earn 75 of 100 points for successful completion.

If an officer doesn’t earn the required minimum score, he or she goes through the exercise again until they do. Remedial training may be required if repeated attempts are unsuccessful.