Training day: Quincy cops hone their skills at Ephrata airport

EPHRATA — Turns out, there’s a proper technique for throwing a spike strip in front of a speeding automobile.

It’s something Quincy Police Officer Jerry Martinez practiced over and over Tuesday under the watchful eyes of QPD Detective Damon Powell and School Resource Officer Sal Mancini on a lonely stretch of unused runway at the Ephrata Municipal Airport late Tuesday.

There’s a lot to it, actually. The strip is pressed together, folded up like an accordion, and once tossed out into the street, an officer has to pull an attached rope quickly so the strip opens up without giving a driver time to try and avoid it.

It takes Martinez a while to get it right. At first, he would toss the training strip — a standard spike strip without the spikes — so that it landed spike-side down.

Not particularly effective when trying to stop a vehicle.

As Mancini and Powell make suggestions — let it go with both hands at the same time, throw it sideways and not, “you’re overthinking it” — Martinez has another idea.

“Let me take my gloves off,” he said.

But Martinez does get it, and twice shows he can toss the strip out in front of and theoretically disabling a speeding SUV driven by Quincy Police Officer Steven Harder.

It was all part of an afternoon and evening of training that saw about half the Quincy Police Department in Ephrata to drive an Emergency Vehicle Operations Course and hone their driving skills and then perform a simulated high-risk stop.

The other half of the QPD had been here last week, doing much the same thing on snow and ice.

“This was initially for diminished road conditions, but obviously the snow went away, so we had to change things up a bit,” said QPD Detective Powell, who is overseeing the two nights of training.

The course is fairly short, and involves a slalom driven as fast as possible followed by a short “maze” through a coned box with tight curves that requires slower, more precise driving, also done as quickly as possible — all without knocking over any orange traffic cones.

Officers got several chances to do practice runs through the course before doing two timed final runs — one using traction control, and another without.

Everybody did the course in around 30 seconds, give or take a few seconds.

Powell said the training is important because despite recent changes in the law, police departments are still allowed to engage in high-speed pursuits in DUIs and reckless driving, though officers with law enforcement agencies like the QPD must get a supervisor’s permission and the incident itself must meet certain criteria first.

As he prepared to drive the course, QPD Sgt. Chris Lafferty explained the value of training like this.

“When things come up in patrol, when you drive in response to a domestic (violence call) in progress, a physical fight or you have to back someone up, either in the county or someplace else, you have to drive at a high rate,” he said. “It kind of prepares you before you put yourself in that situation.”

It’s about getting to know what you can do with a vehicle, your limits, and about pushing those limits while still maintaining control, Lafferty explained.

“It’s important,” he added.

Officers also split into two teams to practice a “high-risk” felony stop on a vehicle — seized several years ago by the QPD in a drug bust — “parked” in a parking lot. Officers carefully and methodically approached the vehicle, calling out commands in both English and Spanish, to an “armed suspect” played by Daniel Reyes, an assistant at the city’s animal shelter.

Sgt. Jorge Trujillo ordered Reyes to roll down the window, stick his arms out, open the door from the outside, and then slowly approach the officers — each holding a plastic, simulated firearm — by walking backwards.

Reyes was instructed prior to the exercise to obey all the commands he could hear.

“This is typically done after a vehicle pursuit, or for a highly violent crime or a stolen vehicle because we don’t know all that is in the vehicle,” Powell explained. “They might have guns. We don’t know.”

As Trujillo and Mancini approach the suspect’s vehicle, Powell has to warn another officer from approaching on the other side and creating a potential crossfire situation in which officers might end up shooting other officers.

“We break it down to the basics, so they can communicate and move with each other as a crew,” Powell said. “They use their curtain of light, they’re using their verbal commands to give verbal commands to the suspect in the car to come back and be arrested.”

Powell said the runway at the Ephrata Municipal Airport is not quite big enough for proper driver training, but the QPD makes it work. Other agencies in the area go to a facility at the Hanford site or even the Basic Law Enforcement Training Academy in Burien, he said.

Martinez, 23, who has only been a police officer in Quincy since last May, said he became a police officer because he wanted to make a difference.

“I’m from Los Angeles originally, and the police force there, they aren’t the best with the community,” Martinez said. “I grew up seeing that type of stuff and I didn’t want that.”

Martinez, who lives in Rock Island, said Quincy is home, and he “loves the place.”

Martinez also said he even likes training days like Tuesday, which found him folding up and tossing a spike strip over and over and then driving as quickly as possible through a short course of traffic cones.

“I love this type of training,” he said. “Anytime you get to do any type of training like this, it’s really good, because 90% of our job is in a vehicle.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached a cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.