A & E Reality TV show “Rookies”

[Brian King]

A & E Reality TV show called “Rookies”

This has so far been entertaining while offering interesting insight into street patrol. Many of the shows are humorous as the rookies make error after error. But not all shows end happily. RIP officer Josh Norris murdered while responding to a domestic dispute. Officer Norris was a rookie on one of the episodes and at the end of the episode they told how he became engaged to his finance then they wrote he responded to a domestic which went to an interview with his field training officer who had also responded to the call as back-up and was there when his brother officer was shot and killed.
Anybody else seen the series? I have only seen maybe four or five of the episodes and enjoyed all of them so far.

Regards
Brian King

 

[terryl965]

Yes it has been a good show.

 

[arnisador]

Is there much about the H2H aspects of their training? That's what usually draws me into these shows 9and then I may get hooked on other aspects of it).

 

[jks9199]

I've watched a few episodes. It's decent -- though I think it's very unfair to the rookies and the Field Training Instructors/Officers because it's hard enough to transfer the material from the academy to the street without a camera crew documenting every one of your screw-ups... 'Cause the screw-ups (which are inevitable and part of the learning curve) make better TV than doing things right.

There's very little on the DT (other than critiques of mistakes) because the show focuses on field training, not the academy.

 

[Brian King]

"Is there much about the H2H aspects of their training?"

The few episodes that I have seen Arnisador show the rookie interacting with his FTO’s (Field Training Officer) on the job with interviews with both thru out (what they were thinking what they saw etc.) There was one episode were the rookie and FTO rolled up on a call and the rookie was able to jump out and assist on a pile-up type of arrest. Another episode the FTO was highlighting the rookies tendency to stand squared to the people he was interacting with. I have not seen them in the gym working on techniques and such but I have also not seen every episode so perhaps somebody else can answer the hand 2 hand question. It is not like cops with lots of arrests and violence cherry picked from thousands of hours of tape. It does not seem to be sensationalized as modern shows seem to be. It shows the interaction of the FTO’s with the Rookies, with the officers and the private citizens and with both the FTO’s and Rookies with their superiors (SGT’s and such) There was one episode where the Rookie ran out of gas and had to go on the radio to ask for gas, one episode where the Rookie called in the wrong code, one episode where the rookie (ex military) was just told to stay with-in site of he and the FTO but then almost immediately ran off and ended blocks away by himself in a bad neighborhood and had to stand by the corner waiting for his ride to come and pick him up.
You can watch the rookies as they improve thru the 30 minute episode that actually covers weeks. One rookie one episode. If you’re looking for how this department trains their Defensive Tactics vs this other department this is probably not the show for you. If you are curious about what kind of people want to become cops, curious about what kind of training a new out of academy officer gets, curious about what FTO’s are like (some can be umm jerks) then this show might be of interest to you.

Regards
Brian King