On Sept. 9, the Issaquah Police Department began a 10-week Citizens Academy to teach willing community members about the ins and outs of police work. Reporter writer Daniel Nash is attending — this series chronicles his experience and the lessons learned about policing in Issaquah.

By the beginning of the second class of the Issaquah Citizens Academy, everyone became much chummier; collectively enraptured by the quest to learn more about the weird, wide world of police work. I immediately struck up a conversation with Jan, a retired resident who taught grade school in the Midwest before migrating west to teach computer skills to adult Boeing employees.

“Mean Jan Green they called me,” she said. “Like the football player, Joe.”

We also picked up a handful of new students, filling out City Hall’s Eagle Room. Their timing was impeccable. At the top of class, Officer Nathan Lane and Sgt. Andy Rohrbach informed us we would begin with the grand tour of the Issaquah Police Department.

Into the Deep

Our journey began with a trip underground, to the station’s indoor firing range and the Issaquah Jail. The gateway leading below has always been the first thing I notice walking into City Hall. Dark gray and forged from metal, it isn’t so much a “door” as it is a “portal to the deep” — the department could probably make an effective prevention program for future crime by simply taking minor juvenile offenders two steps inside and clanging the door behind them, over and over again.

The atmosphere only became bleaker as we descended: The natural light of dusk gave way to washed out fluorescents, the homey decorations of the lobby to spartan drywall and concrete, warm umber woodgrains to sterile dishwater-colored lockers. The taste of the air was somehow… less. Bland, if air could be called that.

As Lane led us down a long hallway of cabinets for the department’s Special Operations Team equipment, he warned us that we’d be revisiting many of the night’s stops in future weeks and that we’d need to keep a brisk pace to stay on schedule.

But at the end of the hallway, our first stop was one we wouldn’t see again: The department’s indoor firing range. The firing range was a boon for the department, bringing in officers from Washington State Patrol, Kirkland PD, Bellevue PD and the U.S. Marshals Service to exercise their trigger fingers — the spent brass picked up and sold by the department for recycling.

“Was” because incidences of lead poisoning over the past decade prompted the department to temporarily shutter the range for ventilation-improving renovations, authorized by the City Council less than a week after our tour. Despite the closure, Lane assured us we would have a “surprise” for our Simunition firing exercise in a future class.

Lane and Rohrbach stood in the center of the five-lane, 25-yard-deep range as they described how officers needed to meet a minimum qualification of approximately three of every four shots or better hitting center mass, firing from either hand. Officers who vie for the Special Operations Team — the local SWAT equivalent — must make at least 90 percent of their shots.

Lane went on to describe an exercise I knew to be called the “Mozambique Drill”: Two shots to the chest, one to the head on a target moving progressively downrange. It’s also known by some instructors as the “Failure to Stop” drill, the action of last resort for dangerous and uncooperative subjects.

A classmate wondered aloud why officers aren’t trained to take shots into a nonlethal spot, like the kneecap.

“Well, that’s a very hard area to hit accurately,” Rohrbach said. “It bends, it moves … a big chest, the head, those are bigger.”

“There are definitely other tools to use,” Lane added. “Like our mouths, or the ones in our belt.”

We were led past even more secured doorways to the jail, where we saw the security nerve center and the breath testing station for suspected alcohol-related crimes like DUIs.

Lane led us down a hallway where male inmates had their dormitories. They hooted and hollered at us as we passed. One inmate danced and made monkey noises against the glass. It didn’t occur to me until later that, in its own way, this was a sophisticated commentary on the situation of law-abiding citizens spectating the other side: “You want a tour of the zoo? Want to watch the animals dance? Well, here I am.”

But jail is an inherently fascinating subject, tapping deep into the human fear of lost freedom. After a long round of question after question lobbied at corrections staff, Lane practically had to peel the class away.

“We’ll have a whole other week to learn about the Jail,” he assured us.

We ascended back to the surface. Rohrbach explained — almost apologized — that the department’s administrative offices were mundane, not unlike most offices. But in comparison to the basement levels, the police department’s administrative offices were practically vibrant.

We filed past the patrol sergeants’ cubicles, then the detectives’ cubicles. Toys, small action figures and statuettes decorate some of the desks.

Patrol officers, spending most of their days in their car, don’t have the luxury of a desk: Instead, they file reports at one of four community desks set up down a hallway with sound dividers in-between.

Lane gave us a peek into the evidence room, which was filled with recovered bicycles. To someone like me who reads police logs every week, it’s almost an in-joke: Bikes, from $60 throwaways to what can only be called multi-thousand-dollar sporting investments, are one of the most commonly stolen and recovered pieces of property in the city.

Our last stop is the emergency dispatch center, serving Issaquah and the Snoqualmie Valley. I was surprised by how small it was at four dispatchers.

But if any stop on the tour could be described as the polar opposite of the department’s basement, this was it. Each station was taken up with a wall of screens, the individual screens devoted to specific tasks: One containing an area map for pinpointing locations, one with a phone call log, one devoted to active calls and one for researching information like names and license plates.

We split off into groups to lob questions at dispatchers between calls. We learn that a typical shift is long and late. Twelve-hour shifts from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. were the norm for my group’s dispatcher. Through it all, they have to maintain grace and calm with callers who, by virtue of calling 911, have often just run out of both.

“We have to ask certain questions,” she said. “Name, date of birth, address. People get really upset about it, but they’re things I need to know to help. But if they’re calling me, they’re having a bad day.”

Another dispatcher pipes in that, regardless of the hardships, the job is rewarding.

“These people are the lifeline of this police department,” Lane said as she shuffled us out. “They take all the calls and send officers where they need to go. Do officers come in and do that? No we don’t. So we’re grateful every day to have our dispatchers.”

Life On Patrol

When we returned to the Eagle Room, we were greeted by Officer Jesse Petersen, a classmate of Rohrbach’s from the academy before either had landed a job with Issaquah PD.

Petersen was also voted “Best Looking Cop” in Evening Magazine’s 2014 Best of Western Washington contest — a status that earned him a few friendly catcalls from the women in the room.  His deep tan, gelled hair and fast-talking, bluntly upbeat California accent seemed to speak more to the archetype of surfer than cop. But he’s an officer of the law — and, more importantly for the night’s presentation on patrol procedures, a uniformed officer — through and through.

Petersen opened with the news reel from a 2011 incident in which Issaquah police — including Petersen — responded to an active shooter in Olde Town. Gunman Ronald W. Ficker had abandoned his rental car at Front Street and Newport Way and walked to Issaquah Middle School with two rifles, firing a single shot as he passed through the campus. Ficker exchanged fire with five officers near Clark Elementary School before he was killed by police.

Petersen received the state’s Law Enforcement Medal of Honor for meritorious conduct after the incident, alongside then-Officer Laura Asbell, former Officer Brian Horn and Corporal Christian Munoz.

“I show [this video] because this is a patrol call,” Petersen said. “Eventually everything will come from patrol. It’s not SWAT, it’s not some super-sleuth detective, it’s us.”

What struck Petersen about the shootout was how quickly it had escalated. Just minutes before, he had been filling out paperwork related to leads on a public exposure case. When dispatch reported the abandoned car, he figured it for a “garbage call” — a suspicious circumstances report that ended with a logical explanation. Sometimes days are filled with garbage calls. Then the shot call came in.

That’s why it’s important for officers to lean on their training and remain prepared at all times, Petersen said. One-by-one, he pointed out his Taser, his pistol, his extra magazines, his pepper spray. All of them fit on a belt-and-suspenders rig on his uniform. He weighed it once — it came in at more than 35 pounds. Propped against the wall behind him were his AR-15 rifle, a battering ram and other equipment kept in his car.

But, as alluded to by Officer Lane on the gun range, the most important tools for police are their mouths.

“I believe 98 percent of problems can be solved with communication,” Petersen said. “They really can. I mean, I could go out and pick a fight with a bad guy — and I’d probably find that pretty quick. But it wouldn’t be very effective and it would be more dangerous than talking it out.”

At the same time, Petersen said, he always maintains a certain amount of distance and attention to the person he’s talking with in case the interaction turns unexpectedly violent.

“Is it lonely, then, being a cop?” Ron Faul, a classmate and volunteer for the Christopher Reh city council campaign, asked.

Petersen thought on the question a moment. “Lonely?” Petersen said. “Not lonely, really. Concerned for my own safety, sure. Hopefully before the end of the next eight weeks, you’ll understand why we do what we do and why we need to keep you at arm’s distance.”

Petersen credited exercise as one coping mechanism for stresses on the job. Often, he doesn’t catch more than a few hours sleep a night.

But, for the most part, he just doesn’t get stressed out, he said. He enjoys the job. As a child, he dreamed about becoming a cop. Now he shows up 45 minutes early to shifts to get a jump on his work.

“I’ll probably work until I have a stroke in my car,” Petersen said. “That’s true.”

Next: Detectives and narcotics