Reporter Traveled Long Road Taken by Sheriff’s Deputies

Of the thousands of San Diego County residents who apply each year to become law enforcement officers, only a few survive the exhaustive screening process to qualify for training in an academy.

The Times sent staff writer Glenn F. Bunting to attend and monitor the 74th San Diego County Sheriff’s Academy, which began Jan. 3. As part of his reporting, Bunting applied to become a deputy sheriff, taking the battery of pre-employment tests that included medical, psychological and polygraph examinations.

With the cooperation of the Sheriff’s Department, Bunting had extraordinary access to academy training sessions, textbooks and personnel and conducted hundreds of interviews with academy administrators, training officers, instructors and cadets.

His report, a four-part series of stories beginning today, provides an in-depth profile of the people who are attracted to law enforcement as well as a behind-the-scenes analysis of the the training they received during the 18-week-long academy.

During the academy’s second week, the cadets were confronted by the deadly side of police work when classmate Kelly Bazer was slain by gunmen as they fled a robbery. Suddenly, the cadets and their family members began to question the rewards of law enforcement as a career.

Later, cadets found a course in officer safety increasing their discomfort. The daylong session began with a slide presentation showing the bloody bodies of police officers who had been slain in the line of duty.

The Sheriff’s Academy, held twice a year at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, is considered among the more stressful in California, where many training programs have abandoned a boot-camp atmosphere in favor of a more relaxed setting that is more conducive to learning the principles of law enforcement.

Some trainees cracked under the pressure and could not go on. For those who survived the academy, the stress is just beginning. They will spend their first two to five years as deputies inside a county jail facility where their assignment is to control inmates, many of whom are violent.