The NJ Cops Magazine Series…Police Academy Cape May County
Episode V: The Real World
Within Range
After a stressful week in firearms
training, recruits realize that having
what it takes to make it is in their sights
n BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
n PHOTOS BY JIM CONNOLLY
All the pushups and sit-ups endured, the laps around the
pond run, the misspelled words rewritten hundreds of times, the
shout-downs, the hours of shining shoes and the meals in which
“please pass the salt” was the only talking allowed threatened to
become a loss, a missed shot if you will. Range Week hit the recruits of the Cape May County Police Academy, and that put it all
on the firing line.
“Personally, I was a little nervous, a little stressed going into it,”
Recruit Paul Hadinger of Middletown Township professed. “God
forbid you don’t pass firearms week. You get kicked out.”
Trepidation about qualifying haunted Hadinger, and all he did
was emerge from Range Week as the top gun of this class, firing a
93 and garnering honors by one point in a five-person shoot-off
to be top shot. Imagine the stress on the firing line when, during
the first shooting day of Range Week, nearly half the class scored
in the 40s and 50s. A long way to go to make the score of 80 needed to qualify.
So when the much-anticipated Range Week finally came to
fruition, would it weed out the one-time class of 55 that was now
down to 52 recruits any further? Or would this become the most
telling experience so far of Police Academy: Cape May County,
and yield evidence of whether these “kids” were getting closer to
walking, talking and being real cops?
Reality law enforcing definitely arrived during Range Week and
the reckoning from many of the recruits seemed to indicate that
they are getting closer to being ready for the real world.
“Of course, it’s jarring when you step in the door and have that
shout-down on Day One,” Perth Amboy Recruit Willie DeJesus
corroborates. “But now we’re not stressing every night trying to
find this and that. They have already set us up to be in a position
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NEW JERSEY COPS
■ DECEMBER 2016
to perform at a very high level.”
If there’s a study in the reality the Cape May Police Academy
takes to the next level, then it’s DeJesus. Director Ted Nagel targeted DeJesus as a recruit who benefitted greatly from this dose
of reality, one who came in with his own way of doing things.
“I always like to state my opinion if I feel something is wrong,”
DeJesus admits. “But falling in line and following orders is something I have gotten better at.”
A study in reality to be sure. DeJesus had plans to get married
in Costa Rica in December, but when he got an offer from the
Perth Amboy PD – where is big sister Jessica is a detective – he
pushed up his wedding to Sept. 10. He has been honeymooning
every week since in Cape May and realizing that seeing his wife
only on weekends means they both are in training.
DeJesus cops to having formidable driving and shooting skills
– he missed the top gun shoot-off by one point – that were developed playing video games. But it gets real for him during the
cadence runs when the group of 52 sounds off in unison, and
that feeling of being a law enforcement officer courses through
his veins.
“You see 52 strong coming around the corner and it really gets
your blood going,” DeJesus confides. “It’s definitely all about being proud.”
If pride is one of those characteristics vital to being a law enforcement officer, then leadership would be another. Leadership
development goes into the fabric of every aspect of the Cape May
Academy program, of course, and it has been seeping through
with some subtle individual expression.
The recruits recently elected James Collins from Wildwood
Crest as their class president. Now, Collins will tell you he is
not the guy who will stand up and make a rousing locker room
speech. “When I was a Class 2 officer, I had a sergeant who let me
makes mistakes and he helped me correct them,” Collins relates.