The NJ Cops Magazine Series…Police Academy Cape May County
Episode II: The Journey Begins
Stressed to Drill
Can this class of recruits endure the pressure?
Are they willing to do whatever it takes?
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
n PHOTOS BY JIM CONNOLLY
Misspelled words bring the angst.
When recruits in the Cape May County Police Academy Basic
Course misspell a word on their daily reports, they have to write
that word 25 times. A sign on the door to the main office of the
Cape May Public Safety Training Center reminds them of the
reprimand.
The treatment like this hits recruits from all sides at all times.
Any given day can start with running suicides at 6 a.m. They
have to do push-ups before being allowed in the mess hall, and
there is no talking during chow. The wrath can come down over
wrinkles in the uniform and shoes not being polished to a mirror finish.
A week into Police Academy Cape May County – the NJ Cops
Magazine series looking at the journey through the only residential academy in New Jersey – the seven women and 48 men
who make up the recruiting class that began on Aug. 30 are
enduring relentless stress – physical, real and simulated. Make
that 47 men; one dropped out just a week into the 22-week
course.
The first test the recruits must pass is learning to live with the
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■ SEPTEMBER 2016
stress, and they are tested all day, every day. And that is constant from the time they rise in their dorm at 6 a.m. until lights
out at 10 p.m.
“We apply the stress to see how they respond to the stimulus, and we base our training around that,” reasons Ted Nagel,
Deputy Director of the Cape May County Public Safety Training
Center and the sage who will become a combination of Patton
and Yoda to these recruits. “If somebody breaks down under
artificial stress, how will they respond under real stress? Police
officers have to be able to handle a variety of situations that
threaten or challenge their comfort zone.”
Nagel’s four years of military service and four years of reserve
duty that led to 20 years on the job, including 16 with Lower
Township, perpetuates the discipline that is required 24 hours
a day Monday through Friday when the recruits are on campus. So the first weeks are filled with stress points and pressure
points to build discipline muscle, not to mention other kinds.
The first morning of the first day put recruits through the
vaunted “Shout Down,” in which Nagel and his team of drill
instructors reigned volumes of verbal stress on the aspiring
law enforcers. The decibel level didn’t wane when the class
returned from Labor Day weekend: A drill instructor noticed