Law Enforcement Experience Narrative

As a non-traditional college student, I felt this experience at the Butler County Sheriff’s Office would provide me another perspective from a law enforcement organization outside the military operational infrastructure with the insight of correctional and court system operational levels.
During my twenty years as a military policeman the roles of the military policeman aren’t all law enforcement duty assignments. There is a heavy focus on security and field operations pertaining to battlefield mission relations for specific military commands. My intent was to take advantage of this opportunity provided by the university to gain working experience in the highly regarded Butler County Sheriff’s office with the possibility to get my foot in

However, I initially started the previous semester asking students that previously completed the Criminal Justice System (CJS) 220 Field Experience class inquiring about the positives and negatives of their experiences with certain departments. After evaluating this information, I reached out to the school to inquire if they had any resource listings or point of contacts from previous internships completed by prior students due to any type of consortium of agreements with the university. However, the response to this inquisition was not what I expected. This part of the class is left up to the each student to develop their research and net working skills; to reach out to law enforcement organizations for their internships. Basically, this is like job hunting and it requires the individual to do their research in the field they are seeking for future employment with while not being paid for their time in the department with the trade off for experience and the possibility to get hired or a reference for another employment opportunity. My suggestion for future classmates seeking a department for this field experience class is to start at least a semester before to acquire possible departments

In addition, this prior coordination allowed me to work with my point of contact, working out details with my set class schedule and the department protocol for internships for each area within the department specializations. My first day at the Sheriff’s department started with the similarities I had with my 20-year military tenure in the United States Army. The initial meet and greet with the point of contact, Mrs. Melissa Spurlock, started with the basic protocols entering a new organization with pleasantries of the introduction and what is expected with the in processing in the organization. The old adage of ‘the first impression is a lasting impression’ upon the organization to make sure that you provide that professional appearance at all times and have the proper paperwork or documentation to complete the in-processing requirements. The walk through of the operational side of the house was very similar to military in-processing requirements with office functions that support each department internally. The only thing I felt was different was the finger printing process requirement, but the access and identification badges showed similarities between organizations within their operational protocols. I believe the proper meet and greet protocol with the chain of command starting with Captain Sons was very