Police graduates out protecting our communities

Schools aren’t the only places holding graduations. Nearly 60 police academy recruits walked across their own stage last week after completing an intensive seven-month training to join the Nassau County Police Department.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and police commissioner Patrick Ryder congratulated the new officers, handing each of them certificates last week at the new Center for Training and Intelligence in Garden City. 

Most of the graduates  are now members of the Nassau County Police Department. While the rest are headed to Hempstead, Freeport, SUNY Farmingdale, SUNY Stonybrook, Long Beach and the sheriff’s departments. Joining the police recruits were two police medics finishing up training.

Shelby Saroka is headed for the Long Beach Police Department — serving and protecting a community she grew up in.

“I’m excited to get out there and make a difference,” she said. “And as far as (being) worried, I don’t want to see terrible things that’s happening in my community, so I suppose that my fear (is) to see something bad happen.”

Compassion and integrity are the rules Saroka will operate under with her police badge pinned to her chest.

“I’m happy to be getting out of here,” she said. “It was a good experience, but I’m ready to move on.”

Daniel Watters looked up to his grandfather since he was a kid. But it wasn’t until later in life Watters began his journey following in his grandfather’s footsteps to become a police officer.

“It’s been my dream since I was young,” he said.

Detouring from that path briefly, Watters spent six years serving the country, including a tour in Afghanistan, giving him a little bit of a leg-up on training since it was “similar” by comparison to his military days.

Now Watters will join the Hempstead Police Department. Unlike his specialized days in a different uniform, Watters expects to wear many hats as a police officer.

“You kind of got a job to do and get it done,” Watters said of the military. “Here, you have multiple jobs to do.”

And you have to do it while keeping any situation from getting heated. Part of the training focused on how to talk slowly and calmly to the everyday people officers encounter.

“We ask you as a police officer to be a lawyer,” Ryder told the graduates. They also have to understand Miranda rights, so-called “Terry stopping” — briefly detaining someone they have suspicion committed a crime — and also a number of the legal protections afforded to everyone in the Bill of Rights.

“You’re asked to be a doctor. You use CPR, first-aid, a defibrillator, to administer Narcan — and yes, you deliver babies,” Ryder said. “We ask you to be a firefighter — you rescue people from burning buildings and cars because you truly are a first responder on the scene. We asked you to be a crime scene expert, you preserve the scene so our victims can get closure.”

Closures like the one that has led to an indictment of convicted serial killer Richard Cottingham — the so-called “Torso Killer” — that had been announced that same morning in connection with a 1968 killing in Valley Stream.

“You’re actually a family counselor, responding to domestics,” Ryder said. “You act as a social worker. You’re a mediator. You’re a pharmacist, (and) it isn’t all about opiates, heroin pills, cocaine, meth and the deadly fentanyl. You’re asked to be a school safety expert. You know how to be a protector.

“You have been trained for events like Columbine (and) Parkland, but we pray to God we never see those things here.”