New group of law enforcement academy recruits learn the meaning of stress

Mar. 6—SANBORN — For the members of the 82nd Basic Training Class at the Niagara County Law Enforcement Academy the description of the first lesson in their curriculum, Orientation to Police Careers, could not have seemed more routine.

But the recruits were about to find out that nothing in police work is ever routine.

As Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti and Niagara Falls Police Superintendent Nicholas Ligammari left the academy classroom, where they had just welcomed the 26 recruits of the 82nd Class, a sense of anticipation settled in. The recruits sat in silence, waiting for the academy co-directors to return to the room and begin their instruction.

It was quiet and calm. Until it wasn't.

From a door at the rear of the classroom, four Niagara County Sheriff's deputies and one Falls police officer burst into the room. In voices loud enough to make a person's ears ring, they yelled for the recruits to stand up, pick up their duffel bags, filled with their gear, and raise the bags over their heads.

"Pick 'em up. Pick 'em up," they yelled at the top of their lungs. "Get your trash over your head. Don't let them (bags) drop."

In a split second, the calm of the classroom had been turned into chaos. Tables and chairs were pushed away in every direction.

Academy co-director and Niagara Falls Police Detective Angelo Berti looked on, approvingly, while the recruits, holding their duffels, over their heads with out-stretched arms, ran into an adjoining classroom.

"We're giving them safe stress," Berti explained. "So that they will better react to the stress they encounter when they're on the street."

Berti and Niagara County Sheriff's Captain Thomas Huff both called the exercise "stress inoculation."

As the recruits continued to hold their duffel bags over their heads, and the instructors kept yelling at them, it soon became clear that many of them lacked the strength and focus to complete the task. So the instructors yelled at them again.

"It's obvious," one instructor said, "that some of these people have never been yelled at." He walked away shaking his head.

Huff, who led the instructors in the exercise, said the lesson is the first step in teaching the recruits the discipline that they will need in their new career to keep themselves and the public safe.

"Discipline is huge," Huff said. "Discipline in your behavior. Discipline in your actions. The first time (a recruit experiences stress inoculation) they see they are no longer an individual, you are part of a team."

As the instructors took the duffel bags away and began directing the recruits through a series of drills, including sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and other high-intensity exercises, they continued to bark orders at a rapid-fire clip. The idea behind these drills, they said, was to test the recruit's ability to focus and "pay attention to detail" in a loud and perhaps confusing environment.

"Attention to detail makes a (criminal) case. That's why we stress it," Huff said. "Inattention is complacency. We give them the tools (to succeed) but they have to keep them sharp."

Another instructor said bluntly, "Complacency is what gets you killed on the streets."

Huff echoed that sentiment.

"You can go from having a nice lunch one minute to literally running into gunfire the next," the veteran sheriff's captain said. "And you don't get to say, 'Time-out. Let me get ready.' "

If the chaos and screaming in the room, and the sometimes rapidly changing orders, left the recruits confused and distracted and caused them to fail to perform, that just ignited even more yelling from the instructors. When one recruit failed to correctly execute leg thrusts by keeping his knees on the ground, an instructor, walking by, yelled, "You have the position of weakness. Weakness has no place here."

"We're going to expose them to stress. We going to teach them to self-regulate," Huff said. "The more they're exposed to safe stress (in the academy, the better they'll handle stress when they face it (on the streets)."

By the end of their first lesson, the 82nd class looked, shell-shocked. But Huff said over the next six months of training they'll improve day by day.

"They're a large group," he said. "They have a wide spectrum of (life) experiences. Some have experienced this in the military. Others are young and have never faced this type of adversity. No one is expected to ace this job on day one."