To better understand what it is like to be a police officer, AccessWDUN rode along with Officer Alexandra Rivera from the Gainesville Police Department during their day shift.
Rivera received a degree in criminal justice and wanted to become a financial investigator. Seeing the need for bilingual officers in the community prompted a change in his career.
“When someone calls 911 for help you know they are calling you either at their lowest time or at a time that they are in need,” Rivera said. “Just the sigh of relief and their face when they see you and know someone is gonna speak Spanish and is there to help them. That is definitely something I can’t explain, I know they are thankful.”
A typical work week with the Gainesville Police is not your typical Monday through Friday. According to Lieutenant Kevin Holbrook, officers will work on holidays and weekends.
“Our officers will work 12-hour shifts. So one week, that means you work a Monday, Tuesday and you're off Wednesday and Thursday. Then you work a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The next week, you only work Wednesday and Thursday, so you get the rest of the week off,” Holbrook said.
The day shift begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 7 p.m. and the evening shift starts at 7 p.m. and ends at 7 a.m. Shifts are changed every couple of months to keep the officers well-versed. Holbrook said Gainesville is a diverse city with a daytime population and a nighttime population, so shifts are rotated every four months.
“It's one of the things that we see to be a success with our agency. We put it out to the officers multiple times to see if they wanted to do permanent shifts, and they always come back to stay the way we are,” Holbrook said.
Every officer is assigned a badge number that coincides with their car according to Rivera. Gainesville has 102 sworn officers mixed up in different divisions, however, the officers usually ride solo as a one-man unit.
In order to keep up with records and what happens on a shift, officers have to keep up with their daily activity log which is easily accessible through the laptop in their car.
“Our system allows us to put ourselves en route to calls on scene and then add notes off of the computer to avoid so much radio traffic because we're so busy here,” Rivera said. “The less radio traffic we have, it gives the other officers to speak on the radio in case they get involved in something that's dangerous.”
Each officer also has to turn on their body camera when they arrive at a scene. The camera will have footage from 30 seconds before they turned it on. Their vehicles are also equipped to record any incidents that may happen in the vehicle.
“There's a camera facing forward, there's a camera facing our back seat,” River said.
If interested in working with the Gainesville Police Department Holbrook said to go to GPDjobs.com to obtain more information and to get the process started. He also encourages people to ride along with one of the officers to see the ins and outs of law enforcement.
“It's not necessarily always what you see on TV. So we want them to get firsthand experience,” Holbrook said.
