Wahluke's students learn police work through career and technical education program

MATTAWA — When the Wahluke School District administrators and school board adopted the CTE (career and technical education) program, they truly meant to prepare their students for all kinds of employment opportunities after high school.

They went as far as to ask Grant County Fire District No. 8 (Mattawa) and the Mattawa Police Department for courses on fire fighter and police work. Teaching for the MPD is Doug Barger, who is retired from the Adams County Sheriff’s office.

“The whole thing is called public safety, but the courses are like police science and fire science,” he said recently.

“The class is a way to show the kids other job or career opportunities that they may not be exposed to otherwise,” Barger added. “We expose them to cops, get them to know that we laugh, cry and have personalities just like they do.”

The fire and police courses were planned in 2013 after consultation with the fire department. According to CTE Director Mike Smith, it has worked out as he hoped. More students signed up this year than last year.

There is classroom work at the fire station. There are various field trips. Most of the classroom sessions are taught in hands-on style.

A police officer explains his equipment and its uses. A guest speaker – Adams County Sheriff Wagner the first two years – teaches interviewing techniques.

There is a K9 demonstration, and one of the students is polygraphed as a demonstration.

“Nothing embarrassing,” Barger said.

Barger shows the students old crime scenes that he worked and then relates them back to interview techniques, evidence gathering and polygraphing.

“We play the game CLUE to demonstrate deductive thinking and build team skills within the squads,” he said

There is some joint teaching at Barber’s class, with the fire dept., involving incident command at major scenes. Barger plays a variety of videos about the police academy, taser applications, OC spray, spike strips, car accidents and so forth.

Field trips have included the Benton County Jail in Kennewick, the MAAC emergency communications center in Moses Lake, the national guard armory in Moses Lake and a demonstration by the county’s tactical response team.

“We go to the Benton County Jail because it is large, and I have a contact at the facility,” Barger said.

Students also dust and lift latent prints off of several types of objects.

The students learn blood spatter analysis with spatters of red beet juice. They learn about reading blood spatter and how that information can be used to work a case.

There is leadership training. Students are assigned to a squad for various activities, and one of them is the squad leader. This is new this year.

A kindergarten class has been added this year. The squads present fire and law safety subjects to the youngsters. They get to experience the SIDNE car. This is the simulated impaired driving car.

In the future, Barger hopes to have a bomb squad do a demo. He couldn’t get it scheduled this trimester. It will fit the district’s trimester scheduling in spring trimester.

“The kids seem to enjoy most of it,” Barger said. “We have grown from eight students last year to more than 20 this year. I have been told that some of last years kid’s want to take it again.”

“I had one student last year tell me that he didn’t know cops had a sense of humor,” Barger added. “That was very satisfying to me because that is a very important factor. Cops are human, and the vast majority are there to keep us safe.”