Sorry for the lame lack-o-posting of late.  It seems offline activities and workload all came together at about the same time.  The big project that I just finished the design for was given the go ahead, and I just concluded the kickoff meeting with the development team.  So it looks like work will be pretty busy for the next three or four months.

I started attending the Keller Citizens’ Police Academy at the beginning of this month.  It’s on Tuesday nights from 6:30pm to 9:30pm.  I also just wrapped up an amateur radio class last week, which had been on Thursday nights from 7:00pm to 10:00pm for the past 10 weeks.  I am now the holder of a Technician class amateur radio license (or at least I have my call sign, which is in the FCC’s ULS, but the actual license certificate has not yet been sent).  I don’t have a suitable radio yet, although I’m investigating the available dualband (2m/440) handheld units.  The amateur radio class was done as a continuing education activity for the Keller CERT team.  During an emergency HAM radios are often used as a communications link when all the conventional systems are down.  Tarrant county has a RACES net, which I may join.  I’ve got the required training out of the way now (you have to have a HAM license, incident command training, and the SkyWarn class), although I think I want to revisit the SkyWarn stuff before I do so (they covered a lot of stuff in the seminar, and it didn’t all sink in the first time).

The Citizen’s Police Academy has been good so far.  I went in with a bit of trepidation, as I’m a bit suspicious of police in general.  So far, though, it seems like at least our local Keller police are pretty down to earth.

The first night we learned about DWI field testing.  It cleared up some of my concerns about what they’re looking for (e.g. I couldn’t stand on one foot very well stone sober, but it’s not so much balance, but attention to directions and doing two things at once, which drunks don’t do well).  This department puts a lot of effort into catching drunk drivers.  Last year they had 403 arrests for DWI/DUI in Keller.  That averages out to 1.1 per day, every day of the year, in a city of approximately 30,000.  From the police reports I see in the local paper, it’s about an even mix of local residents and people from surrounding cities.

Last night they covered searches, seizures, and arrests.  Of particular interest is that Keller officers generally don’t try to talk people into consent for searches.  If they think they have cause, they go ahead and arrest the person, tow the car, and get a warrant to search (or do the search incident to the arrest).  I’m not sure whether I like this better or not, given that the arrest is generally for something simple (e.g. broken tail light) that is technically an arrestable offense.  But then, they usually only do this when they have a strong suspicion that there’s something wrong.  I suppose my trepidation about the whole situation is that it mostly involves drug offenses.