Citizens Police Academy Week Two: Driving a Squad Car

It’s not obvious, but it makes sense. Traffic stops are the most dangerous part of a police officer’s job, Officer Nick Skweres said Wednesday during the second class of the fall Citizen Police Academy.

There are so many unknowns: Who is the person behind wheel? What does he have in the car? Who does he have in the car?

The car itself could easily become a deadly weapon, as Skweres demonstrated by showing a video of a person backing his car onto the hood of a squad car during what should have been a routine stop.

On an expressway, cars passing by a stopped officer also pose a hazard, as they could easily hit the squad car, the officer or both.

“You feel that wind when they’re driving by,” Skweres said.

Skweres shared the dangers as well as some of the strategies for dealing with traffic stops during the Citizen Police Academy’s traffic lesson.

The mystery involved in traffic stops makes them a uniquely tough element of patrol work.

When an officer responds to a domestic incident, for example, the dispatcher has asked numerous questions and gathered as much information as possible to aid the officer in his work.

Running a license plate on a traffic stop, conversely, gives very little information and definitely doesn’t let an officer know if the person in the other car just robbed a bank or has a gun in his glove box.

For suburban officers such as those in Darien, traffic stops make up the bulk of the work, Skweres said.

There’s a lot to keep track of during the stops, between peering through the car’s windows with a flashlight in search of threats and driving safely amid the distractions that fill the inside of a squad car.

Each car is equipped with multiple radios, a computer, a GPS and more, making it a veritable Studio 54 of lights and sounds (minus the narcotics ... unless the officers are carting away drugs from a bust).

The clear high point of the evening was when each student got to drive a squad car  — lights and all — around the parking lot during a mock traffic stop.

“It’s awesome,” said Kyle Haugh after his turn around the lot. “I’m not a cop, and I got to drive a cop car and not get arrested.”

Jim Kiser, who’s enrolled in the academy with his son Tom, said the evening gave him a greater appreciation of the dangers officers face on the road.

“It gives you a different perspective sitting in the driver seat of a squad car rather than being in the driver seat of the car getting pulled over,” he said.

Editor's note: Patch was at last week's kickoff class for the Citizens Police Academy but learned that if you say "I'll write it up in the morning," there will be breaking news in the morning, and you won't get to your police academy post. Then there will be more breaking news. And more breaking news. And you still won't get to your police academy post. But the academy updates will now come on a weekly basis.