Two cars are pulled to the side of a Hermosa Beach street. One is a run-down truck with tools in the back; the cab smells faintly of beer, the driver a construction worker headed home to San Pedro. The other is a late-model SUV, a youngster buckled in the backseat; up front sits the mother, bound for her Hermosa home, whose breath blooms with spearmint.
Which one is driving while intoxicated? It is the kind of decision that officers with the Hermosa Beach Police Department confront all the time. And, thanks to the Hermosa Beach Community Police Academy, it is one that citizens had to make for themselves.
The academy, which begins April 19, is a free eight-week training course designed to educate the public about the department. Participants must be Hermosa residents or who work in the city, be at least 18 years old, and not have any felony convictions or be presently wanted for any crime.
“What I want participants to get out the program is insight into the numerous decision making aspects of our job, many of them with serious consequences,” said said Officer Joe Polestra, who serves as coordinator for the academy.
Polestra, an 18-year veteran of HBPD, had long wanted to host an academy, and found a supporter last year in Chief Sharon Papa. The department held its first session last fall, attracting 16 participants. The two-car DUI exercise was among the favorite activities.
Actors consuming real alcohol played the drivers, and participants were told one of them was above the legal limit for alcohol consumption, Polestra said. Given a chance to evaluate the situation, almost everyone initially suspected the construction worker.
Breathalyzer data later showed that he was well under the legal limit, while the woman was above it. In an age in which police departments around the country face criticism for racial profiling, the exercise surprised citizens, and showed the troubling persistence of preconceptions.
“The whole class was like, ‘Oh my gosh!” Polestra said. “It shows you the difficulty, the aspect of liability, that really presents itself in this job. Who is more of a danger, the guy who had one beer at dinner with a friend, or the mom who’s had four glasses of wine in a big SUV?”
Hermosa resident Lorie Armendariz, who was among the graduates of last fall’s community police academy, said that learning about traffic stops in general was among the most informative aspects of the program, especially given that getting pulled over for a potential traffic violation is the only interaction many citizens will ever have with law enforcement.
“There’s a whole lot of reasons you can stop me. There’s so many laws on the books
It could be a broken taillight, anything,” Armendariz said. “But if someone just looks like a suspicious character, you can’t pull them over.”
Each class lasts three hours, but only 45 minutes of this is typically spent inside a classroom. The rest is devoted to Interactive activities like the DUI exercise. Polestra says he was inspired to design the course this way after he attended a community police academy in Orange County, and found himself getting bored.
“It was three hours of getting lectured at, and no one likes that,” Polestra said. “I wanted to make Hermosa Beach’s academy fun, and incorporate the beach culture of the city.”
Among those already signed up for the upcoming session is Matt McCool, a member of the Hermosa Beach Emergency Preparedness Advisory Commission. McCool, who serves as a U.S. Naval reservist and has been a volunteer firefighter, said he believes it is important that civilians be more informed about the work of public safety personnel.
McCool hopes the experience will enhance his service to the city, and believes that other civic leaders could benefit from going through the program. He recalled that when he was going through the El Camino College Fire Academy, several members of the Redondo Beach City Council came by a station house. The council members put on the heavy gear that firefighters wear when deploying to a blaze, and struggled to trudge up and down a flight of stairs.
“They brought out some council members and put them in turnouts,” McCool said. “It was a great educational experience for council members to see what is involved in public safety.”
McCool said that he is looking forward to being able to use the department’s state-of-the-art shooting range. The range caused some controversy before opening last year, with residents questioning both its location and cost. But Polestra said that last year’s participants were impressed with the facility, especially with the way it could simulate complex scenarios, and offered multiple options for non-lethal force, like a Taser.
Decisionmaking like this is exactly what Polestra hopes the program will communicate. In another exercise, participants were tasked with breaking up a simulated bar fight inside a packed Pier Plaza tavern.
“A lot of people wanted to go in and pepper spray everywhere, but that’s getting in your face too,” Polestra said. “Plus, what if there’s one guy in that group that’s a victim of the crime?”
Hermosa Beach remains an extremely safe city. But Polestra has found that citizens are often shocked about even the low levels reported. (The department handled about 4,000 cases in 2015). Providing this kind of information is a key part of community policing, a strategy that has become increasingly influential in urban departments over the last 20 years.
“Some think it will scare people, telling them a lot bad stuff,” Polestra said. “But I’m of the school that, the more information, the better.”
