#WeekInJustice: Week 115
If I’m going to use the word “Holocaust,” then it won’t just be in a bullet point about what happened in justice this week. It should be the whole of the Weekly, and ‘Tis: For many years I had heard reference to a special training entitled ‘What You Do Matters’ designed for prosecutors and police officers, and as you know having experience as neither, I had never been privy. When I accepted the invitation this week to finally participate myself, I didn’t realize how powerful the experience would be. I didn’t realize I was quietly and respectfully joining the most recent graduate class of brand new TPD officers (pictured above) as they went through three very intense hours of training so sincerely, so earnestly. They were fully engaged in the particular history of how the Nazi Party took ten years of calculated manipulation to get the local police to do their bidding. A theme was “the slippery slope.”
As I was still collecting my thoughts, chance would have it, I ran into the new cadet’s Chief in the parking lot. I told him this must be the finest crew to come out of the Academy since my brother’s crew (obviously.) I told him about what they said about wanting (in 2023!) to be officers, “to do something I can be proud of, to serve my community, to BE THE CHANGE,” they reported. I told him how brilliant and intuitive their responses were as they learned what local German police were faced with and what atrocities too many of them eventually committed. I watched them in real-time realize they must always respect their chain of command but QUESTION any challenge to their moral compass, because “I was following orders” will never again suffice.
With gratitude to our faculty: APAAC Exec Director Elizabeth Burton Ortiz @APAAC1973 and Oro Valley Commander Chris Olson, I can’t wait to bring this to The People’s Office.
Onward, and to be continued,
Laura
@EBOrtizAPAAC
