"THE CADET" a NCSHP Patrol School Documentary

0:06 [Music] good Che North State one ID of

0:53 423 yes sir North State 1 is approximately 2 minutes ETA request LC and current conditions 3016 cleared land LZ good copy on variable Winds of the 16

1:51 [Music] w I'm Colonel Freddy Johnson Jr I began my journey with the state highway of Troy in 1995 with hard work and determination I progressed through the ranks to become the 28th commander of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol you're watching a documentary of a North Carolina state highway patrol Basic School these events and commentaries are true to life and they represent realistic expectations of a Cadet during Patrol school we value

2:36 each and every member of our organization from civilian employees to Cadets Troopers and all our supervisors we know our members are our greatest assets we strongly believe in our core values of loyalty integrity and professionalism our Cadets will face numerous challenges to complete this program those of them who weathered the storm will become North Carolina Ina state troopers of the thousands who have applied only 6,000 have earned the title of Trooper after graduation each new Trooper will continue their training over their career to become an elite law enforcement officer each member will have the opportunity for advancement as well as receive specialized training in

3:21 various positions this has been a gratifying career and I encourage you all to pursue your dream thank you thank you for watching our presentation the cadet there is a storm coming I will not quit no one will outwork me I am not the strongest I am determined I am not the smartest I am driven I never lose I only win or learn I will weather the storm [Music]

4:07 oh [Music] I'm a North Carolina state trooper let me tell you where my story began

4:55 [Music] left left right Ro

5:46 where you supposed to be where you supposed to be get what are you doing what are you doing son what are you doing hurry up f hurry up hurry up morning 64th basic school I am your commant first sergeant ler today start your journey to become a state trooper for some of you this will be the most difficult task

6:34 you have ever endeavored standing before you is your basic staff they will be the ones who mold you who scoped you into being state troopers I am Jeremy brunon major for the north Carina Highway Patrol and director of training here at the training academy my job is not to produce the perfect Trooper instead my goal is to provide Cadets with necessary tools and essential skills so that over

7:19 time a district is able to train and develop and Mentor these young Troopers into pillars for the state and beacons in the community and advocates for law-abiding citizens we do that a few ways we do that through teaching our core values our core values of professionalism integrity and loyalty but we don't stop there we also teach our Cadets humbleness we teach them work EIC and we teach them team building skills our ultimate goal is for our districts to be able to successfully train these cadetes and for us to set them up for Success we ultimately want our Troopers to come home safe each and every

8:10 night so my name is uh Cadet Alvarado uh I'm from morid City North Carolina which is in Carter County it's on the east coast I'm 22 years old be 23 this month I'm a Cadet in the 164th basic school here at the Academy and at the State Highway Patrol Training Academy here in Raleigh North Carolina so the first day of troll troll school I remember um it's complete chaos cuz you're you want to stay focused in stay locked in so your vision is really just like a like a hole like a streamline hole and you don't want to look at anybody cuz you're told not to look at anybody you're yelling lost my voice on the first day um so the very first day they line you up in front of uh Building 7 and you stand out there and then all

8:58 the Troopers come out in their class A uniforms all your basic instructors and uh they come out there and they're marching uh left right left and then you kind of you start tensing up heart goes pounding you're kind of you might shake a little bit my knees were shaking I remember and uh guy comes out there he says if you want to be a North Carolina state trooper come to these this line over here so we all Sprint over there come out the line and then you they give you a piece of paper on where your room is you need to go what building you need to go go to your partner and then you get to the rooms and for I remember like about 3 seconds we were just kind of peace and quiet cuz there's no Troopers around in the rooms and more people started coming in and it got loud uh

9:44 things were thrown everywhere we had to go find our um our sweatshirts that we accidentally left so that was a mistake on our part we had to make sure everything was organized um but the first day was completely insane and um I just didn't want to go slow I went as fast as I could as hard as I could I'm Sergeant Elliot Williams I'm stationed at the North Carolina basic school I am one of the assistant commants here and the reason why that we're are a little hard on the cadets here is because we want them we want them to be stress inoculated we want them to be prepared when they get on the roadside if somebody comes up to them yelling and screaming they won't lose their barrier that they're able to stay focused stay calm under pressure and do their job we also o want to tear them

10:30 down as an individual because they come in individuals not as a unit we want to tear them down and build them back up into a group into a complete basic school when they are the 164th you will see them as one unit you want to see them all the same in the same movement in the same fashion and the same function pretty much as if they're thinking on the same level um to the public when they see this they thinking that we're just yelling at them for fun but there's a method to the madness we do this because we want them to understand that when they're on the roadside the training that we give them there's only one time that they can make a mistake because if they get on the road and they make that mistake it could be fatal and that's one of the things

11:15 that we want to get into their mind of thinking and training is sometimes I only have one chance my name is Cadet Brigman from South Carolina I have a background in the Marine Corps served four years in Marine Corps I wanted to be a State Trooper because it it showed me a lot of what the Marine Corps has becoming a North Carolina state trooper has been a goal of mine for the past 3 years I remember day one of Patrol school it was it was chaotic it was very chaotic there was a lot going on at uh at one time it was like being in a jungle and having many different things been throwing at you trying to pull you that way pull you this way trying to get you on track you were never on track but it was also scary but there were times I could take a deep breath you're going to be okay that was that was my way of

12:01 getting through day one it was just be okay understand what they're saying take it slow even though you've been rush through everything go here go there go there it was it was fun it was fun but it was also chaotic at the same time so the thing that gets me through the patrol school is honestly just knowing that there's an end a lot of people like to count the days but I just know why I'm here which is to be a trooper and I know that I want to stay here long enough to succeed that goal Cadet Thompson I'm 21 years old I from Stanley County North Carolina I remember what it was like the first day of trol school it it was like complete chaos it was it it you know you you arrive on a Sunday early in the morning at 9:00 and

12:46 you're you're there your heart's racing your hands are sweating your your your ears are ringing because you're getting that tunnel vision of the basic School staff about to come and you know be theirs for a few months and you know it really is complete chaos the yelling the screaming the PT everything there's a lot of different lifestyle changes that you have to make you don't just walk everywhere you run everywhere um if we go together as a as a class we're marching um in a Cadence we every morning we put up Flags um and salute to the flag when it goes up and salute to the flag when it goes down uh before cow in the afternoon another one is the chow hall chow hall is probably one of the most important places because of um how you eat changes

13:32 drastically from when you Ed to eating at home when you eat in the chow hall you are staring at your own plate you are not looking around you're definitely not talking and when you get done you put your seat back in you go around the CH Hall certain way same way you came back in and then you leave through the door um it sounds very simple but it's everything we do has a purpose [Music] like this all the way to truth be just like this when I get the truth be what they going to say why I get the truth

14:18 what they going to say how you get the truth be in just one day how you get the truth just one day I'll reply with a whole lot of anger I'll reply with a whole lot of anger blood G with a little bit of danger blood G with a little bit of [Music] [Applause] danger you know something going

15:03 down but you don't know what you're facing oh no you heares come [Music] around your heart starts racing so L when the cold wind blows when see us think they got our number but we a't going to lay down here and I said [Applause] [Music] Hey Left Right

15:49 Lord Yol Lord Lord [Music] fre H head oh Lord [Music] I am kadet hus I'm with the 164th basic patr school I'm 29 years of age I'm from

16:36 facing North Carolina the reason I wanted to become a state trooper is cu I've always liked how a trooper carries himself uh their physical appearance the way they wear their uniform um the way they carry themselves their demeanor around other people um is the respect that they give to people I noticed it and it goes a long way and it's one thing my dad always taught me when I was younger is you want to treat people as you want to be treated yourself and number one thing is treat others with respect and that's one thing I've mainly noticed with how Patrol and regardless of the trooper I met along the way or um whenever I worked uh in my prior agency I've always had that admiration for them just the way they carry themselves respectfully

17:22 [Music]

18:21 uh during taser training uh when you're in Basic School uh first off you have to do a class so you learn about your taser and then like when you can use it how you can use it we watch some videos on how you can use it and then we actually are introduced a virtual reality type deal where we're using a augmented taser which was really cool to see and it's really cool to see kind of the the VR people coming at you and uh looking at closing distance times and whatnot uh so that was really really neat and then of course most people know you do have to be exposed to the taser uh which high patrols issued the taser 10 um and the shocky a little bit different so in the previous years I've been tased with a

19:07 different taser but the taser 10 it it it hurt this time the feeling when you get when you tased being tased it's just it's uncontrolled like something else is taking over your body [Music]

20:15 OC spray training was different here I've been sprayed maybe three times here is a lot of different in the other places I've been sprayed is just you know get sprayed and then you you know move on to something else here you get sprayed and you you do uh push-ups first and then you get sprayed and then you simulate uh something that can possibly happen to you on the road you get sprayed and you still have to put somebody in handcuffs it's it's it teaches you you know calmness and hey slow down you're okay just remember use the resource that you have around you even though your your eyes is on fire you can open your eyes and see what you're doing be able to you know talk and know your direct yourself around while in panic mode it teach you calm and panic at the same time my name's Matthew Rock I'm from uh Craven County

21:02 Newber North Carolina I have a uh background in criminal justice I want to be a State Trooper because uh I had the fortune to have a uh very great mentor my father who was a first sergeant in North Carolina State high Patrol he got on in 1992 and retired in 2019 he is more than the profound reason as to why I wanted to be a State Trooper he uh somebody I looked up to greatly I saw what this career did for him the things he was able to accomplish in his career and the life that it was able to give me uh growing up as a uh young kid all the way up

21:48 to age 25 which I am now uh something I want to be able to afford to uh my family when I get older and have that career to where somebody looks up to me the way that I looked up to him [Music] a

23:00 n [Music]

23:48 x-ray a19 the track is clear go ahead 10 4 my name is Ricky West and I'm stationed here at the train Academy as a lead driving instructor for the high trol there are some expectations of cadets during driver training some of the expectations is to come in with an open mind listen to what they're being instructed and do what they're told the most important thing that the cadet should learn while

24:34 they're here during driving is safety safety takes precedence over everything else if they don't get to where they're going then they can't help nobody n

25:31 so doing driver's training we have this uh part in training where we call it the skit pad where it teach you how to properly control your vehicle while going through wet surfaces on the road so you might be in a situation where you're at going after a subject or you got somebody speaking you have to turn around quickly doing the skid pad teaches you that if it's raining or even with snow on the row it teach you how to properly control your vehicle in a situation during the skid pad you're in going through a quick motion you make a quick evasive turn it teaches you how to properly uh your brakes lock up on you and you slide to get it back straight to get where you need to go so it basically just teaches you safe driving during weather conditions so I learn how to control a vehicle whenever it's hyr planning um I learned how to do a proper pit which is

26:18 precision immobilization technique that uh us a state troopers and law enforcement officers are use whenever we needed to stop an offender it might be a felon might be somebody that's fleeing to elude um and they showed us how to do it properly and make sure before we even do anything how to check the vehicle make sure there's nobody innocent in there you know that they might be holding kidnapped um they also showed us how to drive a high rate of speed which probably that was my favorite part of the whole uh driving course cuz you push that car through the limits the limits you never thought you were capable of pushing it through and they would tell you don't tap on the brake from the get-go we're going to keep it at a certain speed for example Maybe start off at 55 mph and then they'll tell you to increase at 70 and then once you get somewhat comfortable with how the

27:04 vehicle actually steers Maneuvers and where the braking points are at they tell you go ahead and just push it to the limits and see how comfortable you can get with the vehicle but they do it in a safe environment too they're not going to set you in the car just with the seat Bel the vehicles here are actually uh equipped with a rolling cage so if something were to happen because training can fail and it's not always a perfect scenario but if something were to happen the Vehicles equipped to make sure that you're safe along with the driver instructors that's riding with you provide a helmet provide a harness for you you get a lot of training that you probably won't ever get it on any other agency and I'm saying this from my point of view from where I came from I've never received this time type of training in my whole seven years of law enforcement

28:00 [Music]

29:21 all of our Cadets go through a basic rifle program to learn the the basics of fundamental through the rifle uh once we build that platform of the basics we kind of push onto that and work around Vehicles shoot around vehicles moving with the car beam and our everyday that potential of what that uh shooter could do we really uh push our Cadets out here when they're out here with us during those uh firearm training portion to not just think of it as a next test or something that's just got to be P we encourage them to think about this in the what or in the fact that a uh daad for situation why we hope it never happens to our Cadets as they're when they become Troopers the reality is it could happen on their first day of training or on their last day of a

30:08 30-year career and anywhere in between and we want to make sure our Cadets understand that the reason we're out here we're doing all this is to have them as prepared as possible so that they can survive when that bad day comes receiving my issued firearm was the best feeling in the world I I could not get that smile off my face that entire day most of the firearms train that we did was uh a lot of shooting around the car how a how to manipulate a car with a firearm and or a rifle whether that be shoot through the a pillar B pillar C pillar to see if the rounds would go through it finding the window seals and the window gaps to be able to manipulate the car and shoot through it or shoot under the car also do a stress test at in the Firearms block where you will do multiple scenarios of that so the active

30:54 shooter training uh you get with uh the same Firearms a couple of the same Firearms instructors uh uh teach that block and they have great knowledge on this as well and basically it's to simulate and get you in the mindset of hey if you're on the road and you get a call that there's an active shooter at a school or a bank or uh whatever the case may be you know what to do in that scenario so they go through a PowerPoint on uh different terminology that you may use in an active shooter situation and so when you do the Practical portion they

31:40 teach you how to clear rooms properly uh effective communication and uh everything like that so when you're are put in this situation you get dispatched to active shooter uh go in simulated gunshots are going off people are yelling people running down the hallway and you in milliseconds have to think on your feet hey does that guy running towards me is he just a innocent civilian or does he have a gun tucked away so as I get down the hallway he might turn around and shoot me in the back [Music]

32:45 with your feet push away with your foot your foot here your fo win [Music] ready go [Music]

33:32 another thing that they they are big on here at the patrol school is uh DT uh class which is stands for defensive tactics uh what defensive tactics is is uh essentially they teach you self- offense um how to place an offender that might be combative or somebody that's not even combative into uh place them in under arrest and what you will do is they'll start you off baby steps they'll start teaching you you know how to do a proper backfall how to uh shrimp out of a certain move um they will teach you how to get somebody off of you if they go and do Mount which mountain is basically you fall on your back and somebody

34:17 happens to get on top of you and straddle you um you have no control of your hips at all whatsoever you learn how to get that person off of you the proper way and then once you get them off of you you learn learn how to take him into arrest or how to get out of what they call the guard so if somebody wraps their legs around your your waist how to get out of there properly and you learn how to do all those moves and somebody that has never been in a place a fighting place or doesn't train whether it be Jiu-Jitsu boxing whatever the case may be this class is really really beneficial and they harp on safety officer safety and that's why this class was one of the bigger fundamental uh parts to patrol school cuz is if you're coming here and you have never been in a physical fight you have never done anything to place

35:03 anybody under arrest you're going to learn how to do that properly and it makes you more confident it makes you confident in the abilities that you have learned here and then Haron you need to build on this once you get out of school don't stop training [Music]

36:01 B [Music] I'm Cadet mcain I'm from rord county

36:47 collision investigation was a different week from what I'm used to Collision really required me to think more about it when especially they put you into tricky situations that would happen in real life it would be like oh you're in a neighborhood but it's three vehicles involved and it's on three different property lines you got to think about all this how are you going to Accord it my papers were marked all over with red ink my first time but through the coaching and the teachings of that class I was able to pick it up within a week or so and I would like to say I'm pretty fluent at them now when doing measurements there's two methods there's the coordinate method and the triangulation method you with the coordinate method you need a b Bas point you need a reference point and they always want to use T intangible objects

37:33 stuff that cannot move um which that would be IE a utility pole fire fire hydrant anything along those sorts and they'll they teach you that in Advanced Collision and they'll help you through the scenarios that you do but at the end of the day it's it's it's on you and they want you to learn how to do it [Music] will [Music]

39:19 if water was a different week we I enjoyed that week a lot it was very informative to learn especially after the hurricane cuz my hometown was Swept Away chimy Rock was Swept Away by the river and I know it's very important to have information like that in case another scenario like that arises you just never know when something like that's going to happen learning to stay near Vehicles how to watch out for the edies and currents and coming off Vehicles if they're stuck into a river and just handling that was something that I've never had training for or never even thought about training for until today [Music]

40:32 W hey [Music]

41:57 the Hat badge is uh extreme important importance to the high trol uniform it is the piece of uniform that had has not been changed in probably since Hy trol started it stayed the same from 1929 to 2024 uh everybody that comes in contact with the patrol sees that hat badge and relates it to the hive Troll and what they stand for uh while you're out there they they give you a speech uh a motivational speech and they one by one each of the

42:43 Bas of school staff comes by and tells you congratulations keep up the good work and they hand you your hat badge uh what this ceremony from for me meant was uh it had a profound effect on me because as I mentioned earlier my dad was a uh retired is a retired first sergeant from The Hive troll uh they were able to get the Hat badge that he wore from his hat and put it in the box with all the other hat Badges and uh when my lead instructor came around he was like he told me what he told me and he

43:31 said uh your dad gave us your hat bad cuz he figured he would you would want to be able to have it and to wear it your hat and so shake his hand and he puts the Hat badge in your left hand and uh that's probably one of the most uh proud moments I've uh I felt in a long time being able to to uh have the Hat badge that my dad wore for uh 30 years of his career H that was a profound effect on me and something I will never ever forget throughout my career and the rest of my life

44:19 [Music]

45:48 so whenever we first got our class A which is the the actual uh full uniform uh which is a silver uniform that everybody knows traditionally how Patrol wears with the um black uh patch on the side and the gold out outlining it was kind of surreal to actually put it on and we were putting it on for uh the pictures that we were going to take and it felt very very surreal to put that uniform on with my name on the side heus and North Carina how Patrol patches on the side the tie with the actual North Carolina attack on it um the silver pants and we take our campaign hat with the hat batch that we received and we go to the uh building

46:35 where we take the photographs and they put the badge on you for the just SOL for the pictures and when you put that campaign cover it it felt like I had completed everything even though I wasn't quite done but it felt very surreal you put that that hat uh hat with a badge on and the full uniform and you think nobody can tell you anything you you've made it but in reality you still got to remain humble cuz you still haven't completed it there's still a lot of training to do but it felt really really incredible to put that on and I can just imagine what it's going to feel like whenever I walk across the stage [Music]

47:43 today the cadetes from the 164th is a day we all look forward to and we came and got our Patrol vehicles that are assigned to us with our call sign number the county that we're going to um it's a it's a huge Milestone and in the academy um we've all been looking forward to riding this driving this uh Silver Bullet what they call it on on on the road and it's it's an amazing feeling I really don't have any words to explain it it's something that everybody that comes through the academy is going to have to experience for thems and those that have been in the academy understand the the feeling of seeing your patrol car that's assigned to you your call number for the first time it's like

48:30 [Music] Christmas thank you'all God bless [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

49:21 w [Applause] so I'm really looking forward to graduation day because I I can see my family uh and I'm ready to see their smile and how happy they're going to be to see me walk that stage and it's not just my sacrifice theyve also made sacrifices for me to complete this program the best part about graduation day will probably be looking at my father after I've graduated knowing I've completed something that's worth of value and getting to see all my fellow

50:06 classmates graduate with their hats on their badges uh I have to say the most forward I'm looking to at uh graduation is my family being able to uh finally had me on the back and tell me congratulations and being able to see me uh in that class a uniform that not only I work so hard for sacrific for but them as well cuz uh I wouldn't be here at the point I am today if it wasn't for them [Music]

51:26 oh [Music]

52:18 and I will faithfully and impartially execute the duties of my office as Trooper of the state highway patrol according to the best of my skills abilities and judgment so help me God please respond by saying I will congratulations [Applause] [Music] is

53:03 [Applause]