Daniel has had the 'best experience' over his 31 weeks at the Academy with his squad.
Video transcript
Walking through the gates on Day One was daunting, you don't know what you're coming in for. Getting through that first week was really tough.
Fast forward to now, 31 weeks later, it's been the best experience.
Getting to know the squad has been really exciting. The close bonds you form straight away, it's really great.
You're all in it together, you’re all doing the exact same thing day-in, day-out together. Building on those friendships really early on was really helpful.
The biggest skill you can have with Victoria Police is your communication skills.
So I think working in the hospitality sector definitely helped with that. I've worked weddings, I’ve worked funerals and dealing with different people at different points in their life, as well.
I first joined to have a bit more of a job that has more impact in people's lives. So just the aspect of helping the community and helping people that are in need at the time.
So squad leaders, we basically look after the squad a little bit, be someone that they can come to for some assistance and things like that as well.
One thing I learned really early on was not to manage the squad as much, I felt like letting the leaders in the squad really shine out as well because coming to Victoria Police, everyone here’s a leader and everyone needs to be able to show their skills here as well.
The thing that surprised me the most about the Academy is how supportive all the instructors are.
I think coming in, you walk through the gates, you're like, ‘Oh, this is so scary. What's going to happen here?’
But from day dot you get to know your instructors really well throughout the 31 weeks here.
The first thing you learn is that the days go slow and the weeks are really fast, which is so true.
You could be doing law in the morning, you could be doing OSTT (Occupational Safety and Tactics Training), which is like your defensive tactics in the afternoon. Other days you could be out all day running around.
You never know what you're going to be doing.
You might be in the classroom learning the concepts, but then they put it into practice, and you do your pracs and you go outside and you really get into them as well, so you learn it in a practical sense.
In your first sector you’re going to do your firearms training.
You can probably hear Active Armed Offender in the background there going off.
So you get a whole scenario here at the Academy with different buildings, different structural things that you need to work through and working out how to clear rooms and how to go about that.
For family violence, that's a whole week here at the Academy as well. We also do plenty of PT in the Academy, so running around the track, different cycling classes, swimming, it’s really important to have those skills to go out on the road.
The thing I'm most excited about is just getting out of here and putting everything we've learned over the past 31 weeks into practice.
When I first walked through the gate, I was set on becoming a detective and that's really changed while I've been here as well. So getting into one of the specialist units, it’s really opened up my eyes to one of those options instead.
The Academy is challenging, I'm not going to sit here and say it's easy, but if you put your mind to it, you'll get through it.
Every day is different. So yeah, you got to be ready for everything.
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