Tour of the Phoenix Police Academy

For some reason I thought the Police academy was somewhere in Downtown Phoenix and was actually a little more modern looking. Instead it was in the desert at the base of South Mountain; the scenery and the drive there was absolutely beautiful! Wish I had taken my camera and taken a few landscape pictures because it was really beautiful. Anyway…getting back to the point, the academy was not what I expected location wise. My dad is Phoenix Police Officer so he had graduated some twenty years earlier at the same academy I would be visiting. He actually drove me to the academy and was able to show me some of the changes that the academy had under gone since his days. For instance, there is a shade awning over the inspection deck which was never there when he was a cadet. He said it was so the darling cadets could stay out of the sun, which I think is utterly stupid; I mean, they’re going to be outside for 8 hours during their shifts, why shelter them from something they’ll have to eventually get used to? Any who, the tour started a little late because some people don’t know how to tell time, so I was kind of peeved about that (tardiness is a pet-peeve of mine). The tour guide was a really nice lady named Karen (I think), she reminded me of my aunt and she was very informative and friendly. We got to watch the inspection of one class, which I wasn’t too impressed with. I was in ROTC for 4 years during high school and they taught us how to march and salute and have bearing. These cadets and even the teachers were worse at marching than my high school ROTC cadets! I wanted to tell one of the instructors to stop looking at the ground because the answers aren’t written there! Later we listened to a Sergeant who was an instructor talk; he basically told us the same thing the tour guide told us so it was kind of repetitive. I think my favorite part was listening to the weapons instructor’s talk briefly. They showed us some pretty cool videos and were actually quite funny! I also liked the guns they had scattered in display cases in the room. My dad had already told me that I probably wouldn’t be too impressed with the academy, he was right. It was kind of like I had pictured it; however I’m sure it would have been a lot more enjoyable if there were more cadets.