001right so as i told you um the other day and it's a very uh thank you and talk to my students these students are they're seniors in the mall program so for the past three years they've been learning about criminal justice and the different safety occupations things like that some of them are having interest in going into law enforcement not so much uh corrections so i'm not really happy you're here but that's such an important part of the criminal justice system uh we do have the benefit of the jail right next door to us that we have done field trips uh in the past but uh because of the pandemic we haven't been able to do that and i don't think you guys could you could probably scoot out bigger so that was just going
002to hurt us a little bit but nonetheless you know they don't they did learn about corrections yourself four years all different aspects of corrections um but we previously would do field trips so to the jail we may be able to speak with corrections officers to learn about the job so i think that's been part of your presentation right and all right so let's turn it up to you guys thanks for coming and uh we do have the presentation everybody can see everything right okay so i thought my name was austin mccombs i'm the department of corrections state department of corrections i've been with the department for a little over nine years and this is my partner officer amato when you guys would go is it the county jail that you guys visit so it's different
003from the state facility does anyone know anyone that works in the state jails or even in the county jails any family anybody been to jail how was your experience horrible [Music] we're here to tell you about the custody side of the institution it's much better we get to go home every day you know we get paid to be in jail not like the inmates like my partner said we're with the state department you can also get a job with the county right now the civil service exam is open if you guys weren't aware almost every law enforcement agency in the state's hiring right now but we are the largest now what is the space side um this is bayside southern state south woods this is we're covering the whole state we have 11 institutions it
004all depends on residency but because you guys live down here you'd end up at any one of those three institutions so the civil service test is up right now so is anyone 18 oh fantastic so what you need to do is go on the civil service website and sign up to take the civil service exam if you're interested in any law enforcement you know any law enforcement period unfortunately what's going on right now where in the past you paid one application fee and you can check off every box of law enforcement that you want to do right now what the state is doing you have you're getting charged for every law enforcement agencies that you want to sign up for so if you want to be wild police kpa please you have to sign up
005and pay for each application so the best thing i can tell you to do right now is to sign up for the department of corrections because we're the largest hiring we would hire you before any you know local municipalities where they're hiring five or ten people we're hiring 500 to 1 000 people go ahead sign up pay for the application for the state of corrections and pay you know for like one or two other municipalities that you want to you know get in you know want to get into like i said we're the largest hiring we're gonna call you first and um and also our job application for the state department corrections that due date for that is february 28th of this year to sign up for a job application we don't have an exam
006day currently but we do anticipate that being within the next couple of months or so has anyone gone on the civil service website and attempted to sign up for the law enforcement exam you got to get on that like i said if you're looking into getting it because that that this test score will last for about three years so even if you don't you know you might take the test this year you know you're not going to get hired for another year or whatever but just know that that score will last for about three years so go ahead and take it now because even if you're not interested or if you take it now and in a year you're not interested then that's fine at least you know you took that test and you have
007that score you have the ability to go into an agency if they contact you this is our mission for the new jersey department of corrections to protect the public by operating safe secure and humane correctional facilities the mission is realized through effective supervision proper classification appropriate treatment of offenders and by providing services that promote successful re-entry into society the main statement i like to focus on there is services that promote successful re-entry into society a lot of people think these images come into the institutions and they're just there serving a sentence a lot of them earn high school college degrees they can earn work certificates the southern state facility they offer masonry electric hvac we're trying to give these inmates opportunities so that when they get out and they're not incarcerated any longer they're productive
008members of society you know there are some that are you know doing life sentences that's on them but the other ones we want them to come out and be able to give back to society everybody knew what the expectations were come there in shape ready to go and you must surpass those guidelines because um this is a competitive environment and doing the bare minimum isn't going to get you through all these videos that we have coming up everyone is talking on here they were going through the academy so they're giving you that firsthand knowledge like my partner and i we have been in the academy in a couple years so these video clips with these um now officers that are talking really pay attention to everything they have to say so these are qualifications for
009the department of corrections you must be 18 years of age or older possessive new jersey driver's license uh you must have the united states citizenship and residency in the state of new jersey with the department of corrections the only thing that we require is a high school diploma or ged equivalent i know most other municipalities a lot of different departments require you to have associates degrees and bachelor's degrees that's one thing about our department we do not require for uniform capacity meaning officer sergeant lieutenant and major we do not require any sort of degree we go by our civil service examinations so each rank including officer you will undergo a civil service examination for officer you will undergo general questions it won't be specific some of them will be specific to the job but not
010like a promotion to a sergeant or a tenant or a major then they're going to really be asking you details about the job so it'll be a series of general uh multiple choice questions that you'll have to answer for the civil service commission um we also you also undergo medical uh psychological and drug screening uh while you're at a recruitment unit before you go through the process and you'll go on your underwear pre-academy assessment we'll talk about that a little bit later i already spoke about this a little bit this like i said the civil service commission a completely separate entity from uh from our department you know they're the ones that run the test i wish we could run our own tests i wish we could sign everybody up today if you want to
011come and join our department we can give you a test and you can come work for us right away but that's not it's not how it works you're going to go on the civil service website right now they have the examination announcement so you're going to sign up yes sir where did that when was that announced the the examiner went up for uh at least three weeks now okay because i looked and i hadn't seen it and uh i would i thought it wasn't going to be released until later on this year next year but it's uh it's out now yeah just a little bit okay and you have to apply by uh february 28th this year so once you have what's up don't turn um before february we're not like we can't we have
012to wait until next year yes yes the next time test comes out your birthday is february 28th you're good as long as you're 18 before the close of that date which is the 28th you're fantastic if you were born in march unfortunately you know you're gonna have to wait till the next time the test comes around which is about every two and three years so once you sign up for that test they will send out uh send out a little card tells you when your test date is and where it's going to be usually it's at like a high school like each county has it at a big high school so you're taking a test you know with a whole bunch of other people they offer study courses they put stuff out on the civil
013service we can't endurance endorse any one thing because then we seem biased to something but the civil service does offer you know different you know uh course studies you can take um then once you take that test again it comes in it will come in the mail your test score and then you kind of just wait until whatever department you know uh that you signed up for contacts you like myself when i took the exam i checked off every every law enforcement box i could up to you know park police i got like i said department of corrections you know called me first largest hiring entity in the state i was probably on the job for about two years when i got a uh what was it called a certification from cape may county asking
014if i wanted to come work in their jail because you know you stay on the list but i already had the job in the department i wasn't going to leave i was happy right where was that so it could be a situation like that like i said the civil service i wish i wish we could just take everyone like the military does you know we take it as vap and we can do whatever we want but unfortunately we're held to you know police training commission standards and that's what they you know that's what they run [Music] orientation i believe was in new lisbon and um a lot of people found out that it wasn't for them at orientation we put that in there you know we're gonna we don't try to scare anybody we understand
015this job isn't for everybody and it's not and you're not gonna hurt our feelings if you don't wanna come work inside of jail every day but we try to give you a little bit of how it's going to be like especially the academy a lot of people aren't used to people yelling at them it's paramilitary so if you've ever watched videos about the marines or the army you see how their boot camps are it's kind of along those lines so we give you a little bit we try to give you a little bit of an orientation just so you know because we don't you know honestly we don't want to waste your time we don't want you to go through especially if you could be with another municipality we don't want you to come and
016um after two three weeks four weeks decided it's not pretty ill so we try to give you a little bit of taste of that so you kind of know what you're getting into so that's our certification process so you'll all have the law enforcement application which will fill out background check so i'm going to elaborate on our background checks okay how many of you in here have social media accounts everybody right so you have tick tock facebook everything so i try to tell you all that at a younger age right before you're about to get into the workforce to be very mindful of the things that you post online because a lot of people post different things even if you might like something and a lot of you i'm sure are trying to get how
017many of you trying to get into the law enforcement field okay so no matter where you apply you're going to do a background check it's not going to matter if it's a municipality if it's a state police department corrections and they are going to go they will check certain things that you might post online and something that you might put might that you might like that you might think is funny but could be offensive to other people so i tell people at a very young age to be very very mindful of what you're putting on your social media accounts okay because they can dig back as far as 10 15 years plus you know they can go all the way back they have high capabilities so just be mindful of what you're posting on the
018line um like i said you'll be undergoing medical psychological and drug screenings um at least when you come that's where we work down at recruitment in lisbon you'll undergo uh your drug screenings and all that and then you'll and you'll receive an invitation to participate in the csta training academy which is our academy which is 12 weeks and it's going to be in seagra new jersey i don't know if any of you are familiar with super new jersey but it's in a beach town and what county is that that's ocean county by point pleasant okay third round there so it's like i said it's 12 weeks in residency training so by that you are there monday through friday your house there monday through friday which means you get there monday at 6 a.m and you
019don't go home till friday at 6 00 p.m okay and then you you go home on the weekends pretty much got enough time to wash your clothes and get prepared sunday to drive back monday and be there by 6 a.m so that's what i mean by in residency training and then you'll also have two weeks of on-the-job training once you get to the institutions we don't just throw you out there once you get to the institution so don't think that once you get to these these prisons that you're just going to be left by yourself you will have training officers there that will guide you um for your for your two weeks and beyond that um you have to get your only thing you'll have to pay for is your training uniforms when you go
020through the academy roughly between 800 to 900 you have to pay for that all food and board and all that is paid for and you are also paid while you're in the training academy i believe it's based off of a 34 000 salary just while you're in the academy you do get you do get paid um so that's good because before some they were making two or three hundred dollars while they're in academy now you're making a decent living while you're actually at the academy until you finish um and then you'll undergo [Music] all orientation the basic training course that my partner was saying it's a residential academy you're going to go over college-level type courses um law enforcement curriculum we discuss administrative codes 2c and 10a which are the laws that govern new jersey
021and also what governs our department you're gonna get firearms training defensive tactics uh we do drilling ceremony every day we also do physical training every day we'll elaborate a little more on the physical training because it's uh it's it's intense you know we're our our academy is ranked up there one of the highest in the country and we have some of the best instructors you know their job is to exercise and stay in shape because they're there to make you guys you know future correctional officers is the best shape you could be in i'm hard to say you have the on-the-job training once you get inside the institution for the first two weeks you're there you're like shadowing senior officers that are there they're showing you around the institutions i never expected in a police
022academy for it to be like college i think i i was in class and did more work here than i than i did in college honestly we were in class from six to eight hours a day um from eight o'clock in the morning to three uh just before three o'clock in the afternoon and it was very intense very long modules um a lot of different diverse topics normally what they call what they would say in jail but i thought oh you're just babysitting adults all day but it's actually a lot more to it so being in the academics part of it i learned a lot actually um and some of the things that we learned was very interesting so i got to learn some new things i didn't know about i got to understand more
023about being a correctional police officer and why they do things they do and why they go by certain books and knowing that there are so many laws and rules that they still have to go through while protecting and certainly not only the public but also making sure that these inmates come out their facilities ready to be safe and in public again one thing that i didn't realize is how long the classes here were and i haven't to be honest i skipped a lot of classes in college but so i wasn't used to sitting down for seven eight hours straight most people think they come down here and it's just going to be you know maybe a little bit of physical fitness here uh learning about the institution things like that but no there's a lot
024of academics that goes into it there's a lot of different things that you learn about new jersey law there's a lot of different things that you learn about the institution um title 10a that governs the ng dlc so there's a lot of different academics and there's a lot of studying because these tests um if you fail twice well if you fail you know you can be out so there's a lot of studying there's a lot of preparation there's a lot of bouncing information back and forth across your follow trainings to make sure that everyone is prepared for that that test or that exam at the end of that week you you would think you come in here it's a physical thing like just get in shape to go to work but in reality there's so
025much knowledge you have to have to work in these prisons you don't realize what correctional authors actually do every day now you're the one training exclaimed that he's getting a lot of classes in college there's no skipping classes at the academy you're going to be there and you're going to be awake the entire time i can speak i can tell you my one story um i my eyes weren't even shut yet it just looked like i was about to fall asleep and i had to start doing push-ups so you're gonna get strong and you're gonna get smart at our academy for sure so our academics as we spoke on our csta uh stands for correctional with the cstx uh curriculum sorry the academic portion of the academy training will include a college level course of
026studies such as psychological and sociological issues language and communication skills i want to touch on the language and communication skills briefly because you have to learn how to a lot of times the situations happen in the institutions whether it be assaults or or so what so forth you have to realize how to communicate with people just like out in the real world you treat people with respect you know so a lot of inmates are in there they're just in there during their time i'm not saying that inmates are nice i'm not saying all inmates are bad a lot of them are in there for for a certain reason a lot of them can be manipulators so basically what i'm getting at with that is work your communication skills you just treat people in general just
027how you want to be treated and a lot of times you'll be okay it's not going to be an issue i don't want people thinking that the jail is this big scary place but once you get into these institutions you will have your two weeks on the job training as well as the training that you had in 12 weeks while you're in the academy pay attention to that pay attention to the veteran officers that have been in the business for 25 plus years because they've been through different experiences as me and my partner you'll learn criminal law and you'll learn constitutional issues correctional and police practice procedures and comprehensive examinations and written assignments as we said it's not only physically demanding it's also academically demanding it's academically demanding for a reason because title 10a obviously
028governs the rules and regulations of the department of corrections title 2c governs the state of new jersey and a lot of times these inmates know their rights so you can't go into these institutions not knowing policy and procedures so we want you all to go into these institutions as prepared as possible so that's why we teach you about the laws of the department the policy of the department and the laws of the state of new jersey the basic uh course for state correctional police officers can offer up to 24 college credits i also like to say this as well our sergeant right now is going for her doctoral degree okay and the department is paying 50 percent of it okay so i also i encourage even though any uniform capacity it is not required to
029have a degree you have to take the civil service examination i also encourage people even through our department you get credit you get up to 50 of your college tuition paid depending on your gpa so that's also very important and it's other apartment departments in our department like internal affairs and administration that do require degrees so if you ever want to move up out of the uniform capacity there will be some positions that do require degrees you know so i am i definitely encourage you getting your degree as well and the department will absolutely help you get that dependent on your gpa there are different groups within the pt groups that are tailored to every person so even if um you're the most fit person in the academy the instructors are gonna be a lot
030more fit than you and they're gonna push you to be the best person you are and to be in the best shape that you could be right now no stretching let's go outside you can do this no problem everything not even not this right now this is our absolutely bare minimum this is just remained in our academy but then the first two weeks you get there this is the physical assessment that you're going to take now out of all this if you fail any one portion you get nine pt sessions to work on it and then you retake that portion again not the whole thing so if you just fail the sit-ups you get nine pt sessions to work on it then you just do those sit-ups again bare minimum on any given day in
031our academy you're going to be doing a million push-ups a thousand jumping jacks burpees rpt right now is kind of like crossfit based so we do stuff with ropes we do box jumps it's all body weight though so if you think you're going to go to the gym before you you know get into the academy start lifting a lot of weights and doing all that no do you know do the burpees do jumping jacks do push-ups do sit-ups because lifting weights is not and you do that once you get out absolutely because you're going to be inspired when you see all these inmates working out every day it's going to inspire you to keep yourself in shape as well that one and a half mile run i wish believe me i do not like running
032i never liked running i was a marine for seven years didn't like it then either but they get you in shape they make you run and the running becomes fun like my partner said it's a beach town so do you think we're gonna go out and run on the beach absolutely are we gonna run by that hard sand by the water we're gonna run up on the dunes where it's nice and soft now we're gonna do some jumping jacks and we're gonna do some push-ups in the dudes and then we're gonna run some more in that soft sand and then we're gonna come out of the sand and run on the gravel we're gonna run at the grass we're gonna run the pavement where's the enemy academy you're gonna run up to eight miles at
033about a ten minute mile pace so that's something you can kind of gauge yourself off of like the gentleman said in the video there's there's different groups you start off and depending on how big the academy is my academy class started off with three pt groups and it's just about how it's just about the running because like i said the first assessment to keep track of who's running and how fast and then they split you up into those groups your goal is if you start off in group number three which is the slow runners by the end of the academy you want to build yourself up to be running with that you know the a group you know that's running real fast i guess the instructors down there they're in shape and they want you
034to be in shape they want you to be better they want you to be your best they're there to push you and they will push you any questions about our physical training it's tough don't get me wrong it's tough but it'll get you there these instructors will get you there my first initial pt test when i failed and then when i came back the second week two weeks in they would retest and if you don't actually go home so in my head i was like this is not for me for my family so i have to pass i'm i'm in much better shape actually i started running before the academy and i can run it's 8 minute 30 second mile now since i've been here so that's really impressive for me because i've never been
035a big runner so i push myself every time i run here and i can run very well now and that's important because the academy our instructors are about seeing you progress and putting in an effort to try to do better so as my partner said our instructors will work with you you just have to show that you're willing to try because not everybody's going to start out running two and three miles or four miles you know that that takes progression that takes time so what i suggest and this is what i did before i went through the academy is it's a lot of i would suggest you do a lot of cal states and this is with any any department when you start getting into the gym and you start weightlifting and then you injure
036yourself before you get to the academy you're not going to be able to complete their physical assessments so what i tell people is a lot of running uh jumping jacks a lot of calisthenics stuff like that that's what you should be doing to prepare yourself for the academy and when you get your academy date you should be preparing five six months ahead of time to get yourself ready for the academy because like my partner says our academy is paramilitary and it is one of the toughest academies in this in the country you know um so just just get yourself prepared for the physical aspect of it the good thing about this is like when i um i didn't know that corrections was a career path when i was in high school i kind of wish
037i did maybe i would have gone that route but i said i chose the military but us being able to come out here and tell you now like look this is what you can expect you know so if this is something you have this is a goal that you have you know you can start preparing yourself now you're not waiting until you get the certification from the civil service commission that says oh the department of practice wants to hire you and then you come down to our phase processing where we tell you this is how the physical training is and you're like oh i didn't know it was going to be like this so you know you have it in your mind already that this is it's going to be physically demanding like you know
038and it's going to be with a mark so drilling ceremony is something that i've never had until um this academy it was really exciting for me because you know it's one of the first things you do in the morning just after mess hall we had breakfast and you know you're yelling major mainstream does a great job with cadences uh some of them have a little bit of humor to them so it adds levity to our situation but that's not to be mistaken like it's very very it's a very serious time it's a very serious matter drone ceremony dnc is uh it's great for unit morale it's great for self-confidence and um but it takes a very long time it's a very long a certain process i had to fall in with somebody to my right
039being right next to me oh i can't walk too far because then i'm off setting the line so you have to really like where the team like hey you might have to whisper really fast like hey fall back a little bit or hey united speed up a little bit [Music] i think dnc instills in everyone the importance of one uh being on the same page together being one unit and also um potentially detail and because if one person's uniform's off by a little bit everyone gets smoked and if um one person makes a mistake it's very noticeable because everyone else is doing the same thing so i think paying attention to those little details is what this academy amounts to when you're a team you work together and in prison you might not know everybody
040but it's so important to come together as a team even though you don't know each other so being in the drone ceremony and working together as a team you realize like everyone is around you has your back and they they'll be there for you through the thick and thin the grilling ceremony was mostly one of the most important parts of the academy for me because it teaches discipline like once said like i remember a particular time for me i forgot when i was in the academy i forgot my duty felt so i was late getting to line up so when i finally got there and got myself together not only did i have to do 100 push-ups but everybody had to do microsoft so and it teaches it teaches discipline and it teaches you that
041everybody has to be on on the same page because when you get to these institutions they become much more than your friends you know even if you might dislike a person you are all you all have while you're inside of these institutions so they become like family members to you you know if a cold breaks out or whatever we have each other's back 100 doesn't matter if you like the person or not you will have that person back you know so it's important for everybody to to be on the same page and i feel like drilling ceremony and the academy taught that to me and it taught that to to a lot of people that i know because if one person messes up with one person's ties not right as the person that said in
042the video everybody gets smoked so everybody's going 100 push-ups so i think that that was the most important part for me in the academy because it teaches discipline everybody's favorite page money paid that look good you start off as an officer we start off four thousand dollars we're making upwards now of 92 000 that's also not that's not including the overtime that we get inside the institution so if you decide you know when you first you know start working at the jail you can start working more hours you can get paid with money or you can get paid with time me i like to get money you can get promoted you can become a sergeant they're maxing out that's um they just got a new contract so they're they're a little over um right our
043lieutenants max out at 113 and our majors maxed out 129. and like a partner said you only need a high school education to be a uniformed officer so you can have a high school education you know if you have to drive to get promoted you can make upwards of 129 000 that sounds pretty good right i think that sounds amazing the other good thing is you get paid time off you get 15 sick days a year time you can use you know whenever you'd like mostly you know you're supposed to use it when you're sick but being as we're down here by the shore it's a nice day out during the week especially because how's it on the weekends it's packed and i'd be working at the jail on the weekend so i might take
044a day off during the week and i might take my you know rest day go to the uh go down the beach for the day we also get vacation time and personal days our medical benefits are fantastic our retirement plan whichever one you know gets into a career like this so we can have retirement we can have a nice pension military benefits is anyone thinking about the military nobody yeah you can think about it you know that's not to say if you don't get in a department you spend a year you know on your probation you know your probation period if you decide that you want you know you want to go into the military you want to do you know the armored reserves or the you know you should join the marines because you
045know just unbiased but if you decide to do anything with the military our department is extremely military friendly you know they work with you when you have your drill weekends and two weeks off and you also get paid while you're off doing uh your military stuff so you're gonna get paid by the government by the military you're also gonna get paid by an apartment while you're away another wonderful thing we don't have layoffs throughout this um pandemic we've closed institutions but all those officers just go to other institutions we don't lay anybody off and the top tuition reimbursement like we said uh our academy is worth up to 24 college credits depending how much you go to so if you decide to continue your you know college career your college education will pay 50 depending
046on your course load and depending on how many are depending on grade point average and um these are career opportunities and advancements these are different specialized units that we have in the department let everybody know that being correctional is a correctional police officer now is our actual title um it's not just about being in the jail we have several specialized units like me and my partner we work down in recruitment where we do the background investigations uh we check the social medias and you know we go out to different high schools and colleges we go to churches we go to food drives so there are different things you can do our special investigations division is similar to internal affairs which is where i said i i also encourage you to take advantage of our tuition
047reimbursement because to get into an internal affairs one you have to have three years of being an officer and two you have to have some sort of a degree so that's why i do tell people and promotions as far as like administration they do require a master's degree so i encourage people to get that degree as well um our training academy is where you will be down there for 12 weeks for your training before you go to your institution for the additional two weeks so that's another place where we have officers place that to train you physically and teach you positive procedure of the department our central transportation unit is where our officers transport the inmates out of state and throughout the state uh whether it be from medical appointments or transporting to different prisons
048in different states and different um cities throughout the state of new jersey we also have a central medical unit where we do have inmates that are housed we have a certain portion of the hospital we have officers stationed there um our firearm plane unit is one thing when you go to the academy you must qualify for our firearm training um that's a big part we do i do tell people um do not go out trying to practice trying to shoot before you go to our range because you can develop bad habits so i always tell people to learn how to shoot if you're going to go to an academy learn once you're in the academy because you don't want to pick up bad habits and like i said our firearm training we have officer station
049here we also have our honor guard unit where they go to different uh special ceremonies funerals etc um and like i said our promotions would be officers going all the way from officer sergeant lieutenant to major which we discussed does not require a degree each do require civil service tests and they do hire based off the highest score on down i believe passing the score is and then we have our administration like i said earlier requires a master's degree and our administrator is someone who runs who's at the top of the chain in each institution in each prison has an administrator and they run the jail and then they report to the commissioner and commissioner reports to the government so there's a lot of different positions that you can that you can get into in
050this department well these next couple slides are going to be all the pictures of everything we just discussed so this is our our special operations group he said like a version of at least a swat team something like that so you know something really big kicks off inside of an institution they're going to call these guys in you know give it you know help give all the officers that are already in the institution you know give us a hand you know getting a situation under control is an instructor overlooking a pt uh session at the academy these are the buses that you probably see out on the highways and turnpikes you also see bands my partner said that moving the inmates all around the state this is our firearms unit doing a training exercise this
051is the night fire you do one night fire class at the uh when you're through the academy this is one of our honor guards like i said they go to all kinds of special events i was just at a new jersey doubles game when they do the national anthem you know they have the people come out and present the flags me and you know three other officers we just did that you know last weekend but we also do uh funerals and everything else like that this is just women in corrections a lot of people when i think about law enforcement that don't immediately think that it's a job for women but it absolutely is all these women that you see here that they're all different rights the women in the white shirts or majors the
052one woman in the uh red blazer she's one of our administrators um the woman in the black suit she's a special investigator and you have all the different ranks of the uniformed officers and that's just a little bit of what we have in the department so don't think just because you're a lady can't be in law enforcement because it's absolutely it's absolutely a place for us so i had very high expectations going into it and they did not disappoint at [Applause] [Music] you just didn't all what to expect you know going to that orientation that's that's really what i remember just not knowing what to expect getting there and just being prepared for whatever it is law enforcement has been my goal ever since i can remember since i was a child um and i've
053worked my entire life to this moment um to get to this moment rather and i've applied to multiple different police agencies and this is the first opponent that gave me a shot and wanted to see what i could offer them and i'm just really excited having gone through this entire academy um as tough as it was to getting so close to the finish line only five days away i feel like i'm about to complete the biggest goal of my life it's been a long amount of time to be here we had an extended academy because of the covid but finally we've made it we have a couple hours left we're counting down now we're all done tuesday so i didn't think i could do it honestly i thought i was going to fail the second
054pt assessment i was going to end up home but now that i'm here and i'm going to graduate i'm just so ecstatic and so proud of myself this is something that i thought about just watching my father do this for a long time he did this for 24 years before he retired to now taking his footsteps and you know growing from where he left or from where he left off and taking my career hopefully the next step so you know coming coming up to graduation or coming up to leaving him on this tuesday and then getting ready to go in facilities so it's breathtaking i'm still proud of myself i still feel very accomplished with myself [Music] so i had a good support system so with a good support system i needed that to be
055able to kick through this is one of the graduating classes being sworn in at the trenton memorial [Music] hey we're going home [Music] so that concludes our presentation so anybody have any questions but now we're going to open it up to questions great so um so like uh i talked to a military recruiter okay and in there you obviously aren't allowed to have your phone or any form of communication really at all i'm guessing it's the same way no phones inside the secure perimeter institution so we have certain parts outside of the institution but once you're inside that you might not have any sort of communication device that goes for apple watches that goes for cell phones also um when we talk about grooming standards and as far as the department of corrections you're not
056allowed to have and as you can see when you saw the video as far as the males go completely shaped so that means no beard no mustache like i got right now nothing okay so um and that that that's how it is especially you know when you've gone through the academy women you don't have to shave your hair so don't worry about that but it has to be either in a bun or has to be shoulder length so those are the uh zoning standards anybody else have any questions i'm at like in the academy while you're in the academy no you don't have your goals they might give you if you guys are um i don't want to call it being good but if everyone is doing good everyone's on track everyone's doing how they're
057supposed to be doing they might give you 20 minutes on like a wednesday night to go make a phone call but that's about it we do have like something called incentive nights out depending on if like she said i hate to say good but you know they do give you though every wednesday my class we got it for one week and that was it so you know we pretty much uh contact our family uh when we saw them at first you know when we got home on friday so you know that's one thing um it's good to have a good support system like the trainee has said in the video because you know you will need it for me i'm third generation in department of corrections for my grandparents on down in different capacities so
058i had that support system and i had people in my family that that knew about this department and any different factors of it so but i will say that nothing has prepared me for working in this department until i got into those prisons and the doors shut behind me and i had to learn um hands-on so it's no matter what people can tell you he had helped me out a lot to prepare me and a lot of people don't know about the department of corrections because because we're not in the spotlight as much as the police are on the street so that's why we try to travel to the different high schools and teach you all about what we do because a lot of you don't don't know because like i said we're not the
059public spotlight um so it's like i said it's an excellent career it's plenty of room for for growth and advancement i mean work your way up from officer or there's somebody who's worked their way all the way up an officer all the way up to deputy commissioner of the department of corrections so there's so many different things that you can do you know even in the civilian aspect of we have social workers we have nurses we have psychologists psychiatrists so there's so many different things that you can do we are the largest like my partner said largest law enforcement agency in the state of new jersey and the second largest employer in state new jersey health care so anybody else that has any questions you gotta have some questions no more questions about the academy
060any other questions about the academy and requirements touched on everything when you complete the academy do you have it are you offered different facilities throughout the state or you have a choice or while you're in the academy they do create they ask pretty much they know where everybody lives at their addre before it was a lengthy period of time like there are some people that don't get lucky very few though there are some people that might have to travel about an hour you know but the department is very good at trying to put you in an institution that's close to you because we do have 11 institutions throughout the state northern central and southern so they try to pitch you as close as they can but you know that doesn't always work out if you
061do get placed far away it used to be 16 months before you can uh request a transfer but i think they're trying to get it down to like four months if they haven't already done so they do allow you to put an order at least while i was in the academy this is going back nine years ago but i believe they still do the same thing where they allow you to do a wish list of the different institutions that you want to go to go to and then they'll pitch you wherever you know depending on the needs of the institutions you might have said this but where is the training academy located secret where seaguar museum gotcha do you investigate it or um as a police officer will you conduct the investigation well what we
062do is we write inmate in charge the officer will write the inmate in charge uh sergeant or or above will come and investigate that charge and adjudicate it depending on you know the situation always will go through to sip which is our internal affairs department and it may take it from there the charge that it may whether it be with a street crime or whatever because like i said assaulting um staff is considered aggravated assault so an sid would get involved in that and that would become a street any other questions so we do have um some literature over here that we'd like you to take this one of each on anything you see on the desk you can take one of each other on your way out we appreciate you all having us here
063anytime do you all have anything please let us know all right um contact us we're always willing to come out for anything that's our sole job to travel to different schools and so let us know we appreciate everybody coming out tonight today sorry you all have a good rest of your day all right thank you okay guys back to room 120.