Fresh off of a primary election win, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez spent Wednesday afternoon talking with recruits and instructors at the Southwest Washington regional police training academy in Vancouver.
She asked a room full of law enforcement recruits, who largely hailed from Clark County and its neighbors, about the benefit of having the local center, which opened in January.
One recruit from Perez’s home county of Skamania, Paul Uminski, told her it was a huge privilege to be able to train far closer to home than he otherwise would’ve been. Recruits previously had to travel to Burien, near Seattle, to train for five months away from their families.
When Monica Alexander, the executive director of the Criminal Justice Training Center, told Perez of the previously eight-month-long wait times for a slot at the Burien academy, the congresswoman grimaced.
Six recruits raised their hands when Perez asked the room how many of them had children 5 years old or younger. Roughly the same number raised their hands in a neighboring classroom of corrections officer recruits, some of them being women.
“I know this is a big ask for all of your families, your communities,” Perez said of the monthslong training program. “Your choice to spend your time in service, I deeply admire.”
Perez plugged policies she pledged to champion to ease other challenges people, including police recruits face, such as access to child care, first-time homebuyer loans and Veterans Affairs benefits. She told the recruits much of her previous contact with law enforcement was when she’s called them to help if an unhappy customer turned hostile at her auto repair shop.
She told The Columbian she’d heard since the beginning of her campaign about the logistical challenges and difficulty accessing training for those wishing to pursue law enforcement careers.
“Behind the uniform, these are whole people with families and commutes and rigs breaking down,” she said. “It’s really important I understand the sort of human-scale challenges they’re facing and ensuring that their needs are being met.”
She also watched mock training exercises, led by instructors from the Vancouver Police Department, the Clark County Sheriff’s Office and other nearby agencies. In one exercise, recruits from Vancouver police and Longview police practiced a traffic stop, with a Clark County Sheriff’s Office recruit playing as a suspect with a warrant for his arrest.
Another group simulated responding to a bar for an unruly and overserved patron. Another group practiced announcing themselves and making entry into an apartment.
Perez marveled at the variety of scenarios recruits prepare for and the need for them to be ready for circumstances to rapidly change.
“Watching these instructors and the recruits, they’re thinking about thousands of things in every encounter,” Perez said. “We are very fortunate to have these folks who are willing to enter a career in law enforcement, and I’m very proud to be fighting for them to ensure that they’ve got access to the training and staffing and personnel we need.”
The congresswoman said she was leaving Wednesday’s visit with a new appreciation for the “gifted, big-hearted, tough recruits” training in her district.
