Before the Badge: Lubbock police recruits focus on safety, skill at gun range

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - While they are working to earn their badges, recruits at the Lubbock Police Academy are now learning their weapon with the most serious consequences. Three months in, and recruits are getting familiar with the gun range.

When it comes to defending citizens, other officers, and themselves with a potentially deadly weapon, safety and skill are at the forefront.

The week before recruits’ first day shooting their firearms, they spent several hours in the classroom, learning the rules of range and even how to handle their firearms at home.

“We had to sit through a PowerPoint of all the, what we they expect us to do on the range, all the rules and safety rules,” Recruit Mason Bartlett said. “So, we had to know all that before we even stepped out here.”

Then it came time to load the magazines and hit the targets. With safety settled, then comes skill. The focus on technique goes so far to make sure recruits are holding and moving their pistol the right way, even before bullets are involved.

Recruit Bartlett is familiar with firearms, but says learning like this is on a whole different level.

“It feels great. It feels like I‘m learning a lot. I‘m becoming way better of a shooter than I was before doing this, so it’s been definitely helpful. They know what they’re doing and they’re teaching us right,” he said.

That teaching is hands-on, with one instructor for every two recruits. Their experience from the field is also helping recruits focus on how critical these moments can be.

Marc Wall, deputy chief of the Training Division, says if they nail down the form through muscle memory, they can focus more on the situation at hand.

“There are a number of decisions that have to be made in a split second that they have to start becoming aware of. And what people don’t understand is that, that’s not, you don’t walk into the academy with that ability,” he said. “It’s a learned process and we spend a lot of time here at the academy working on their ability to be able to make decisions, several decisions in a matter of seconds.”

Recruits have also started wearing their ballistic vests every day, something Bartlett is grateful for during defensive tactics. Recruits are spending several hours a week over the next ten weeks learning how to gain compliance without using a weapon. They are taking turns perfecting their defense technique with their fellow recruits.

“They told us before we even started DT, like, we’re going to get real close in this next eight weeks and definitely have we got some bumps and bruises. But, nothing that won’t make us better and get us prepared for what we’re going to face out there, if it does come down to having to get into a fight or something,” Bartlett said.

Wall says this is where the previous months of intense physical training come into play.

“Absolutely they have to be physically fit, because as they move forward and get into defensive tactics, their physical fitness plays a huge role in that and being able to perform the tactics,” Wall said.

Meanwhile, new applicants are already at the academy for interviews, hoping to become a part of the next class of recruits.

“It seems like it was yesterday when we were doing the board interviews and stuff, but now they’re coming in and it’s kind of full circle moment and it seems like this whole thing is just flying by,” Bartlett said.

Whether on the range or on the mat, recruits are taking their classes seriously. Because when they may face danger on the job one day, they know they have a family to come home to.

“My daughter runs around calling me, ‘Dad’s a cop. Dad’s a cop.’ So, it’s definitely fun having them. Definitely my daughter, she’s at the age where she can understand things a little bit more. But it’s been hard, but it’s definitely going to be rewarding after it,” Bartlett said.

The demands of their future job have weighed too heavy on one more recruit - what started as a class of 16 is now down to 12.

KCBD will continue to follow their journey Before the Badge.