The Huntsville Police Department’s new Academy class is underway, with the 18-week process ending in July. We’ll regularly follow four members as they share their stories of the Academy.
Today: Latoya Ragland, 28, from Huntsville, a married mother of three. She’s a former track star at Butler High, for which she won three state titles, and earned a track scholarship to Troy University.
Latoya shares her training story with City Blog senior writer Mark McCarter.
I have three kids so I know what pain feels like from childbirth. When I got tased the only thing I could think about was, ‘Oh my God, it was worse.” I could see the sparks flash in my eyes.
Last week was probably the worst encounters we’ve had since we’ve been in the Academy. We had to be tased and we had to be sprayed with OC (Pepper) Spray. It was horrible.
I understand why we need to go through this as part of the training, because if we’re going to be using it on someone else we have to know what it’s like to pull our taser on someone and use it, or use pepper spray, and it’s justifiable.
When we got the pepper spray on Friday, I thought it wasn’t going to be as bad. I thought tasing was terrible. But the spray was worse. It felt like my face was on fire, and it lasted until Saturday. The taser hurts, but it’s over after five seconds. When you get sprayed, it seems like you’ll never stop burning.
They told us to get cleaned up with Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, and I constantly put that on my face and ran it through water. I did that all weekend at home. Saturday, probably mid-day, it started to get better. But when I’d go outside, I’d feel it burn. When I woke up Sunday morning everything was fine. I was still having flashbacks, but I was fine.
I understand why we need to go through this as part of the training, because if we’re going to be using it on someone else we have to know what it’s like to pull our taser on someone and use it, or use pepper spray, and it’s justifiable.
We learned the proper way to use the taser. Ours have two probes, so you have to make sure you’re a certain distance away from a person to use it. You can “dry stun” somebody up close with a taser by taking the cartridge off, but if you’re going to use the probes you have to be farther away. We try to aim for the back area of an individual, to get one high and get one below the beltline, to get what Officer (Joe) DeBoer (training officer) calls “the full ride.”
I got tased in the top part in my back and my butt. It left a spot in both places. My nine-year-old asked me, “Mama, did it hurt? Did it leave a mark on you?”
We’re on our last nine weeks now, halfway through. Where I sit now I’ve come a long way with how I felt about police officers. The respect has changed, how you view other cops, what they go through mentally and what they have to go through in training to be a police officer. The tactics, the work, learning that wherever you always have to be aware of your surroundings.
It’s still day-to-day but it’s coming fast. You have to take it that way. There’s still a lot to learn, a lot to take in.
Read more in our series on Becoming an Officer:
