At the Ontario Police College, Elias builds on his experience with basic judgement scenarios, is introduced to immersive mock incidents and wraps up his time at the college with a graduation ceremony. Amanda takes a call from start to finish when communicators dispatch her to a situation where a man has threatened store employees.
Rachel This is Into the Blue – A podcast about becoming an officer with the Waterloo Regional Police Service.
For each episode, we start with a theme and bring you two perspectives – one from an officer in training and another from an officer in the community.
In this episode, it's all about combining the hands-on skills with academic knowledge and putting it to work.
Rachel I'll welcome back our digital content coordinator, Mark. Hi, Mark.
Mark Hey, Rachel. Thanks for having me back.
Rachel So, what do we have planned for this episode?
Mark So in this episode, we are going to check back in with Elias at the Ontario Police College as he takes on scenario-based training. And then we're going to join Amanda as we follow her on a call from start to finish. So, with that, let's take a short drive back down to the Ontario Police College and check in with Elias.
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Mark On this trip to the college I visited on a day when the recruits were going through what we call scenario-based training. The scenarios can range from anything like enforcing, trespassing to traffic stops and more complicated calls like intimate partner violence and hate motivated crimes. I bet you're familiar with this type of training.
Rachel Yeah, we have to do, we call them judgment scenarios every year in our use of force training. So. Definitely familiar with this. Been doing it for the last 17, 18 years.
Mark No kidding. This stuff is definitely been probably a staple in your career. And I imagine it's been a staple since, the very first few lessons at the Ontario Police College. Today, it still continues to play a big part in training at the college.
Nat Sound
Elias Mock incidents, our OPC, our basically situations of, or examples of different calls for service that you could be responding to. However, it's in a controlled environment and there are sometimes actors that are hired, to come and like play certain roles, to challenge officers, to think in the training in which they had just completed in terms of academics.
So, for example, if you're learning something about the Cannabis Act, then this scenario will have some sort of cannabis in it. And they want to see you apply what you learned in the classroom in this practical, environment-controlled situation.
Mark To help build a sense of realism. The college's created actually a small fake town. It's a whole street of businesses and houses meant to mimic a real town. The streets have names, signs and numbers and real looking businesses. The businesses just aren't facades either. Once you enter that front door, you might find yourself in a fairly believable apartment or a bank or convenience store.
Nat Sound
Mark The only odd thing that I notice is that when you look up just above your eyeline, say, in the mock restaurant where the ceiling is supposed to be, there's actually a catwalk that kind of surrounds the whole room for extra observers.
Elias So there's balconies above each of the rooms so people can actually stand there. The other classmates, and they can look down on you watching the scenario unfold, in which it's really nerve wracking for some people.
Mark With 500 students at the college, there really isn't enough time for everyone to do every single scenario. So, observing is an efficient way for the whole class to kind of make use of that learning. One of Eliza's scenarios started when he was dispatched to a mock convenience store.
Elias So the store, it was a convenience store and it's honestly, conveniently enough, laid out as a convenience store. Literally. They have magazines, they have snack boxes in there. They have fridges with actual drinks in them.
Mark Is that design important to put you in that situation?
Elias Absolutely, yeah. It’s really good to make it realistic because it takes you out of that OPC environment and it makes you think that, wow, I am in this situation. What can I do? Yes, you have your classmates above. You honestly can't even realize they're above you just because you're so thinking about everything and you want to do good.
Mark So generally the recruits in this scenario will be starting someplace else, like up the street or around the corner, and they'll be given dispatch instructions over their actual radios and their duty belts. Generally, as they approach the scene, the actors are already playing out an in-progress situation.
Nat Sound
Elias So they give you the information over the radio, what you're going, what you're showing up to. And once again, radio information is very limited for every call you go to. So, the one I went in was, a store owner who arrested a female because she was, was trespassed at that location, but because that convenience store was convenient for her, because to do this short distance to her house, she attended again, we had to really think about it to try to go, okay, is this the criminal side of the house or the trespassed side?
And you really had to really think on the spot about what you learned seeing their reactions as well. So, if you're like, you say something and you know, they give the other side look, it's like, okay, I'm on the wrong path. Steer here.
Instructor How many black Saturns might there be around? Could be a lot. Right. So now all you're looking for is a black Saturn. So, a license plate trying to get a license plate maybe. And also what else. Maybe a description of the person. Hey, there's a fantastic idea. All right. So we got a little bit more digging okay. Carry on.
Mark You have to remember that this is a learning environment, and you are talking to recruits who maybe never had to deal with this kind of in-your-face conflict before, and now they need to take what they learned about how to theoretically solve conflict and put it into practice. There's no notes for reference. It's all done with the knowledge that you bring in with you.
Elias And, at the end of the day, you're also being evaluated. And at the end of this scenario, there a mass discussion with the classmates above with us, with the actors on what can be done better and provide tips.
Nat Sound
Mark All we're. Since the officers rotate through the scenarios, it was hard to get to the college at an exact time when Alice was going through some of the more complicated situations. Thankfully, some of his classmates were more than happy to let me follow through on some of their scenarios on one of my visits.
Nat Sound
Mark You can hear as the officers are being dispatched. The information you hear is the only information they receive, very similar to what someone in the community would receive being dispatched in real life. I think I was surprised to learn how little information they started with. would you say that's typical for a real-life call?
Rachel Yeah, yeah, for sure. Especially if it's a priority call. The information is kind of trickling in as you're, you know, responding to the call. And because it's if it's a priority, you don't have time to maybe read through the call or do some niche checks or something that you really are just relying on the information being kind of dispatched to you at the time.
Mark How good is that information generally?
Rachel You can't always trust it. I learned that very quickly.
Mark Perfect. So, you kind of taken it all with a grain of salt. Yeah, sure. Yeah. We're going to the call. And I think that's exactly what I saw that they were learning. They're getting kind of some incorrect information, some right information. And they had to work through that in a fake scenario.
Student Rafi. Rafi friend I haven't seen him in forever. Okay. So, what are your concerns with Rafi? Who is he to you? Is it a family member? Friend of mine? He's a friend. He's been missing.
Mark In this scenario. Officers, right. I stumbled across a car with some offensive language on the side. through their investigation, they found quite a few different layers, including concerns about a missing person, a potential hate crime, and an aggravated person to a called initially. So, one of my favorite features of the scenario, actually, was meant to see if the officer would get distracted for a less important call. In this case, it was an incoming call for a noise complaint about a barking dog. across the street, on the street.
Dispatcher Nat Sound
Mark In some cases, instructors might step in and give guidance to anyone who needs it. It really becomes kind of a collaborative approach as they try to get, the student to wrestle with that academic knowledge and apply it in a really physical situation.
Scenario Nat Sound
Mark Safe to say that generally no one is solving situations perfectly right away. Everyone had something to learn. For Elias and many other students, these scenarios left an impression on him. He told me about one mock situation that really stuck with him.
Elias At OPC, it's important to understand that sometimes the actors are students themselves as well. For this particular situation, I was an actor and this was an actual hired actress, and she's been there for years and years and years at OPC. I was her friend that I'm though the complainant. I'm the one that called in because she's been acting strange lately.
She's just staying over at my house. And then officers responded. At one point. She didn't want to come out of the room and she became cooperative. She was talking with the officers, but then she looks thinking, there's birds around her. What was very unique about that situation was you see the different, the different ways a situation can unfold right in front of you.
You can see how her emotions also was delivering in that scenario, which kind of made the officers even more nervous looking. But you can tell like she was in it, like it's in it. I think that's one of the most important calls for me. That really opened up my eyes. Like I learned a lot just being the actor and trying to, like, help my actress to keep going with that scenario as well.
Even when you see the officers stuck, they work together. She shared a personal story after, like after the senior had finished, about her personal story about, schizophrenia.
Mark So we lightly touched on the importance of learning during OPC. That knowledge foundation. You need to set yourself up to be a successful police officer. You can really start to see some of the skills a person needs to have coming into this job. These scenarios really laid bare some of the skills we're looking for, including information seeking, some problem solving, communication, self-control, and relationship building. So, as recruiters, where are you looking to see if an applicant has these skills or is that come up in that process?
Rachel So it really starts, you know, right from the written assessment into the interviews. So, the interviews especially are very competency based. So, you know, even those couple of things you just mentioned problem solving, communication, self-control, those are all competencies that we look for. So, we want to hear specific examples from each applicant. demonstrating those exact competencies in situations they've been involved in.
Mark Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. You're kind of screening ahead of time knowing the situations that they're going into. Experiencing it in the learning environment is one thing. but it's more important to be able to take these skills and apply them in real life. But if you know one thing for sure about the next call, it definitely won't be the same as the last.
While I was down learning at the college back in our region, Amanda has continued to take calls on the road, so we will check in with her after a short break.
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Rachel So we left off talking about scenarios. What surprised you the most about them?
Mark I think what surprised me the most definitely was how closely they resembled real life. Instructors, the college, or choosing complex scenarios from real life. And they work hard to give students kind of that cross sample of what they'll actually experience on the job. by this point, I had been out for a few shifts with Amanda, and we had gone to all different types of calls, but I felt this one that I'm going to feature now, it's totally something that you could have expected as a student at the college.
If you listen closely, you can really hear the elements that an instructor might want to pull out for a mock scenario. let's take this call right from the start. As you know, a community member with a concern. we'll start most likely by calling our call center, either through 911 or our non-emergency number.
Amanda So the call taker will screen the call. If they believe that police need to respond to it, it'll go to patrol, and then it'll get categorized by which division. So, there's three dimensions south, central and north. So, Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo. And then it goes to our terminal. So, every police officer that's on the road has a terminal in their cruiser.
And the call will show up on the cruiser. And then it gets categorized by call type and priority. So higher priority calls, if it's urgent will be priority one. And that's when you see when we're going lights and sirens.
So usually it'll have every call has an occurrence number. And then typically right at the top it'll have the, the call type for example a theft under and usually the complainant.
So who called it in. It'll have their information and little snippets of information that the call taker took. So we have a general idea of what we are going to.
Mark How complete is that information?
Amanda It's small information. Sometimes it can, encompass what happened. But a lot of, a lot of the times it's little bits of information that we take. And then we find out the whole story basically from start to finish, what has happened.
Mark So what's important to understand about some of that first information that might be arriving over the radio or on your computer screen, in the cruiser?
Rachel it's important to understand that that's just a small snippet of the information. So, you as we said earlier, you take it with a grain of salt and it gives you a starting point of where to begin your investigation, but it certainly doesn't give you, you know, everything you would need right off the start.
Mark The new calls can come in in different ways. An officer might be assigned a call by a dispatcher over the radio or computer, or if the officer has time, they can review the screen and offer to take one of those waiting calls.
Amanda So, if it's priority, we'll actually hear a noise for it, because it's actually someone needs to go to that call. Otherwise, we see it on our screen and then usually they're, categorized by zone. So, then you typically dispatch, if they want us to respond to a call, dispatch will send us to us, or we can ask for a certain call.
Mark I rode with Amanda on, Friday evening. And sometime around 7 p.m., she was dispatched to a call where someone had called in to say that a man was making threats to staff at a at a business.
Amanda So we don't know the identity of the male, but we do have a description. So hopefully when we get there, he'll be there and we'll be able to identify him and get him moved along so that staff are safe and then investigate if, the staff want charges laid in regards to the threats.
Mark Rachel, what kind of things do you think you're considering on the way to that call? What do you do to try to maybe get some more information, like what's going through your mind?
Rachel So really depends on the call. If it's a priority call, you're not stopping to read stuff on the terminal, really. You're listening to the dispatcher. You're thinking of kind of all the different scenarios that could play out once you get there, thinking about, you know, how many officers are going where you might want to position yourself, what the priority is once you get there.
Just thinking of anything that might come up so that you're kind of prepared for it. If it's not a priority call, then you have a lot more time. So even before you start, you know, traveling to that call, you might read through the whole call, you might do some nice checks, look in the background of some, you know, different people involved to just so you have a lot more information going into that call. But that's very different than a priority call.
Mark And then do you know every single law, like when you're walking into these things or what every single.
Amanda I wish I could say that I knew every single law, but no, we don't know everything, but with that being said, we are able to, to look things up. And typically, when you could slow things down, you have the time to, to maybe look something up in the criminal code or phone someone.
Mark So we weren't too far away and we arrived on the scene within a few minutes. The scene was surprisingly calm. The only real confusion was as people tried to enter the business that had temporarily clothes to kind of to deal with the issue.
Nat Sound Amanda Oh, okay. Did you go that way?
Amanda Sometimes, obviously from their perspective, they just want to tell us a lot of information. They don't necessarily know what information we need to be able to arrest someone. So sometimes we got to ask those specific questions, especially when its time pressing if that person had just left. We want to typically form ground so that we can get that person, there.
Mark What are forming grounds?
Amanda So, for example, this one was an uttering threat. So, I wanted to know what the threat was if it qualified as a threat as well as, if anyone had witnessed it, if there was an independent witness or if it was caught on video. ten seven the subjects to you.
Mark So why are those pieces of information that Amanda was trying to get so important?
Rachel Well, there's certain things that we have to prove if we're going to lay a charge, on a subject. So, you know, one of the things is identity. You know, when it happened, where it happened kind of at who, where, what, when, why? you know, when it comes to the actual threat, there's to utter a threat. It has to be specifically directed towards a person to cause some harm.
Rachel So sometimes people, interpret, you know, different statements as threats, but under the criminal Code, they wouldn't be actually distinguished as a threat. So those things are important. because if you're going to lay a charge against someone, you have to have all the pieces, kind of ready so that when it goes to court, you have a chance for there to be a conviction.
Mark That totally make sense and in this situation that definitely it met that threshold.
So, at this point, the business owner had some understanding of the direction of the mail. we were looking for, and we headed out through the back of the business to see if he was still around. Almost immediately, we ran into a person.
Nat Sound Amanda Do you know where your buddy went?
Mark It turns out he wasn't the person we were looking for. but a few seconds later, we received word from a second arriving back up. Officer on the other end of the parking lot.
Nat Sound
Amanda Denver. I'll come down. You. Yeah. So, when I got there, I spoke with the complainant and got a description, and I. So, I voice it over the air, and my backup officer, he got there, and luckily he was checking the area and found the guy still on the property in the parking lot.
Mark What kind of things are going through your mind as you're kind of walking up to this?
Amanda Yeah. So, 100% what you just said description. Is this the right person? I'm usually assessing, especially if we don't have a photo or a name. How are we going to confirm that this is the person. So, I'm typically looking at clothing the to make sure that it is, the same person. And sometimes they'll tell you outright that yeah, they may not admit to threatening or anything, but saying that they were there and that that location might just drop in your store for us.
Amanda Nat Sound I'm arresting you for uttering threats. It is my duty to inform you that you have the right to retain and instruct.
Amanda Initially he was calm, but, typically in situations like this, sometimes people aren't very, happy, to be arrested. And his demeanor completely changed. And he was, very, upset and, uncooperative.
Mark Talk to me a bit about I mean, that's a difficult situation. I think any single person regrets how big or small you are. That's tough to deal with. Talking about the importance of teamwork. Yeah, in a situation like that.
Amanda Yeah. So that's really important as well. Like, typically, if we are arresting someone, we want to arrest someone in, pair just for officer safety. But we don't always have the ability to do that. But luckily, I had someone else there, so that he was safe. I was safe, and as well as the other officer. And then, if needed, we can always call for more officers in that situation.
Nat Sound Amanda Unless you if you want, if you read them off, I can get the. Well, I haven't looked I haven't looked him obviously. Yes.
Amanda Yeah. So, for us, because of how escalated this individual was, we really wanted to make sure that he was going to be safe. as well as, like you said, it's in Kitchener, so it was probably a 25-minute drive from where we were. And unfortunately, this individual was kicking in the back of the cruiser. So, we want to make sure that he doesn't injure himself by kicking and inside the back. It's metal, bars and some hard plastic. So, we don't want him breaking inside the cruiser as well as hurting himself. So, we tried to get him calmed down before we left.We didn't want to get on to the highway and have a situation, as well as having another officer come for the drive.
Mark Leaving the scene, the officers had de-escalated this person to the point where he was actually pretty calm and cordial all the way to the jail cells. I think they work to keep him away from topics that triggered him, and keep him focused on things that he wanted to talk about. once we got to cells, he was handed off to the staff there, and we made our way back to Cambridge.
Amanda So, when we got there, I spoke with staff and they advised that the subject had threatened him, and I formed grounds based on what multiple staff members had told us. So, we looked for the subject, located the subject, and he was arrested for uttering threats. After he was arrested, his rights to counsel and caution were read.
If he wanted to speak to a lawyer and he was show cause which means he was transported to cells. So, I brought the subject up to cells, and he was held to see a judge in the morning. And now all the paperwork in the package has to be completed. So now I'm going back to South Division to, do the show cause package so that I can go to court in the morning.
Mark So, Rachel, talk to me a bit about notes in a situation like this, how important are they? especially when that court case may not come up for quite a while.
Rachel I think in any situation, notes are very important. Even if, you know, you're not laying a charge for something. court does take a while to get to get to a trial if you're going to be testifying. So, you know, I don't think anybody could remember all that very specific details of an incident. You know, two, three years or however long it is later.
So you really, really rely on your notes when it comes to trial to be, you know, reviewing them to refresh your memory for that incident. Because sometimes those small little details are something that the case could ride on. So you want to make sure that your notes are very detailed.
Amanda So typically you have to review your notes. A lot of times it's not until a year later. So, you go back, refresh your memory, and then, you go to court on the day of the court date. Typically, what you're doing is you're identifying yourself, your, explaining that you have your notes and independent recollection, and usually they're asking you like, specific questions about it.
Mark how hard is it to recall that information?
Amanda it can be difficult to recall, especially if it's like two years later. but if you don't remember it, you just typically say that you don't remember it.
Mark So, Rachel, do you think that this call kind of reflected this? This uttering threats called reflect it kind of a typical call someone might see on the road.
Rachel Yeah. It seemed like a pretty typical call.
Mark Yeah. In terms of complexity, some maybe are a little bit shorter. Some are definitely probably more complex.
Rachel But yeah, this would be this was a pretty typical like business call. You know, whether it's somebody stole something and left or they threatened somebody and left. You know you have to find the person, identify them, figure out if there's grounds to arrest somebody. And then, continue on with the investigation. Is a pretty typical call.
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Mark While I was completing these ride-alongs with Amanda, Elias was finish up his time at the college, speaking with a lot of officers who attended a long time ago at the start of their career. They always share that the time there can feel short and long at the same time. Long because you're away from family, short because it goes by so fast.
Mark How did it feel on your graduation day? Way back when?
Rachel like 2007?
Mark Oh, that's practically yesterday.
Rachel I remember being really happy to be graduating. OPC was it was good. It was just like you said it. It's a blur to me now, a lot to learn. But I was really excited to get back to, you know, Waterloo Region and get on a platoon and start learning, you know, from my coach, officer in the field. So, it was a really proud day and I was really happy to get back here.
Mark I think just hearing Elias talk, I think he probably felt it very similar.
Ceremony Nat Sound Good afternoon. Distinguished guests, colleagues and family members. Welcome to the Ontario Police College March Past and Review ceremony in.
Elias March Past ceremony is, where your friends and family can come in and you celebrate with your class that you just finished. Well, but. It's at the back of the gymnasium, a huge gym. It's going to be all your parents, and even on the sides of the gym is going to be seats with parents and friends.
And then there's a stage at the front where that's where the speeches occur, and then the chiefs and the executive leaderships from all over the province of Ontario, they come and sit kind of beside the stage.
Ceremony Nat Sound Good afternoon. BC classes 2311.
Elias But, That last dismissal. You just it's like the family that you built the last three months that you suffered, you sacrifice a lot with for together to be here. You build such great relationships and right that dismissal, you know, it's right about to end. Everyone's going to go back to their houses. They're going to continue with their lives. But also, what we what we're done OPC.
Nat Sound
Mark How do you think your mom felt?
Elias She was proud. I've always wanted to be a police officer. Ever since I was a kid, my uncle had an interest. At one point, but then he ended up becoming a teacher. So, they both know as well. I've always wanted to be a police officer, and that's why I selected them both. I think they were very proud and she had a tear in her eye and stuff, and she even got me flowers. How nice was that? The flowers were starting to melt themselves in the exhaust heat.
Mark Do you think she'll worry about you at all?
Elias Out on the road? Yeah. Oh of course. Yeah. It's every family does, right. Especially if they know you're in emergency services. Anything can happen that day. But that's why you say I love you when you leave, right. So yeah. So, for me, I know she's worried, but you do what you can to be safe. And that's why we do all this training to ensure officer safety. Because at the end of the day, everyone wants to go back home at the end of their shift, and rightfully so.
Nat Sound Ceremony That concludes today's ceremony. Have a safe and enjoyable remainder of the day.
Mark I think when you see officers portrayed on TV or in the movies, it's easy to forget all of the support needed to make that one person you see successful. Whether it's the preparation down at the college, your teammates on your platoon, or your family outside of work. Being a police officer is really a full life experience and it takes a lot of support from those around you.
Rachel Yeah, I would definitely agree. You need the support of your family and your friends and you know, your coworkers as well. We become like a second family. And you know, we can't do it on your own. I think you might get into trouble if you try and just do it all on your own. You just really need everybody around you.
Rachel It's not an easy job. So, to have those outlets and people to talk to you about it, just to kind of support you along the way is really important.
Rachel So we'll leave Amanda and Alyse there for now, and we'll check back with them in the next episode, picking up with Elias as he starts what we call post Ontario Police College training back in Waterloo, and Amanda as she takes on another challenging call. Mark, thanks for joining me. I'm really looking forward to what's coming up next.
Mark Thanks very much.
Jen Into the Blue is production by the Waterloo Regional Police Service. It is hosted by Rachel Molnar and produced, reported and edited by Mark Araujo. Supervising director is Cherri Greeno.
Special thank you to the entire dedicated training team at the Ontario Police College, as well as the WRPS Training and Education Branch – without their collaboration this production would not be possible.