Internship Reflection # 9 April 8, 2009

Today I got into the police department at 7:30. When I first got in I was talking to the police officer in the front at the metal detector. He told me a lot about the job. He was also asking me about what I was going to do for my project and why I wanted to be a police officer. Then at 8:00 I went into the records bureau. The clerk put me at a desk and logged me onto the computer and opened up the programs that I was going to be using with their name and passwords. Then I was talking to the sergeant of my department and she asked me if I wanted to do a ride along instead of working in records. She went and got me a copy of the ride along application and gave it to me to fill out. I filled it out and gave it to the patrol department. The next week that I come I will be doing the ride along. Then after that, one clerk gave me some report requests from progressive. I had to search for them and print them out. After that I had to fax them over to progressive. While there was nothing to do I went through the computer system. I browsed through new reports and records. I looked through the global search, case search, and incident search. There were some cool reports. Then I had to answer phones, I asked people if it was an accident or incident. When they told me, I searched for it, when I found it I told them if it was ready and what time to come pick it up. If it wasn’t ready I told them to check back in a day. Later on I had to work at the front window. I attended to a lot of customers, some were very nice and some were rude. I first asked them if it was an accident or incident and them I asked for their report number. When they gave it to me I looked it up. I had to look in three programs. Sometimes I needed to see their license because there was a juvenile involved and they also had to have their kids birth certificate. I then printed the report out. They paid me the money and I gave them their change back and the report. Some people didn’t have all this information so they were mad because they had to go get it and come all the way back. I did this for most of the day. Today was interesting and very busy. I am excited about doing the ride along next week. It will be fun to go on calls to different cases and to see basically what the job is like.