The Officers working at the Police Department handle many different kinds of calls. They do it
all, unlike your bigger cities that have different officers for the various duties involved with
police work. In Goodland an officer may find themselves working an accident one hour then the
next taking a theft report or even helping remove a cat from a tree. Thank God we don't have many
homicides but if there was one, the same officer that may answer your prowler call could also be
the one having to help investigate the homicide.
The men and women working as officers have to take training in all aspects of Law Enforcement. First off they spend several weeks going to the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center at Yoder, Ks. Which is just outside of Hutchison,Ks. The number of weeks involved for this training seems to vary from one class to the next depending on how the KLETC has set them up. After that State Law requires anyone certified as a Law Enforcement Officer to take an additional 40 hrs training per year. Without the additional hours of training the officer will lose their
certification.
With the number of calls the GPD receives each day they must have an officer on duty working 24 hrs
a day. Normally there is always at least 2 officers working a shift. Occassionally due to someone
being sick, on vacation, or other reason there may just be one officer out on patrol. At those times
there will be others on call to help if needed.
The officers normally work an 8 hr shift but as they all know if something is going to happen it
will be at shift change time and they end up working more hours. Plus after all is said and done
and arrests made or accident reports taken, no job is finished until the paper work is done. Even
with all the computers every business has it seems a lot of trees are still used for paperwork!
Currently an officer will work one shift for 2 months then they rotate to a different one.
Back to Top
Shift work can be upsetting to some and families learn to work around the different changes. Officers
prefer different shifts over others. Some like day shift so they can be home in the evening and
nights whereas others hate getting up so early. But they each have to take their turn at the
different hours. The only ones not having to participate in rotating all 3 shifts would be the 2
Corporals. They rotate monthly with either days or evenings, yet occassinally to fill in they do
work a midnight shift. Then the one officer that does a lot of the invesigative work will mainly
stay on day shift. But he isn't immune from the other hours.
The Police Department works with Municiple Codes and enforce them and the city ordinances. Most
of their cases will go to Municiple or more commonly know as City Court. Whenever they have Felony
charges against anyone then they take the case to District Court. Then of course court cases have
a way of seeming to fall on your day off. Officers have to appear in court even if it is a day off.
Law Enforcement isn't a job for someone wanting to work their 8 hrs and go home and forget about
it.
Included with the regular Officers at the GPD they also have 2 Part time Patrol Officers. To be
a part time officer they had to take an 80 hour class to be certified plus keep up other training
hours. These guys work other fulltime jobs but still work shifts at the GPD to help keep the city
safe. Then with all the animal complaints the city was receiving it was hard for the officers to
take care of the animal problem along with their regular duties. The city hired a fulltime
Animal Control Officer who works under the Police Department guidelines. This position is a good
way for someone to get a start in Law Enforcement but you need to like animals! At the very
least be able to handle the animals.
This is just the basics of the Goodland Police Dept., I hope to have further information available
and posted to this site.
At the time of this writting, 11-03-05 the following is the list of GPD Personel.
- #301-Police Chief...........................................Ray Smee
- #304-Patrol Officer.....................................John Bowman
- #305-Patrol Officer.....................................Jim Gillespie
- #306-Corporal..................................................Greg Kroskey
- #307-Patrol Officer......................................Frank Tabor
- #308-Patrol Officer.....................................Mike Fenner
- #309-Corporal..................................................Bill Fulcher
- #310-Patrol Officer.....................................Joni Meyer
- #312-Patrol Officer.....................................Frankie Hayes
- #314-Patrol Officer.....................................Cary Amos
- #322-P.T. Patrol.............................................Rick Stramel
- #323-P.T. Patrol..............................................Ryan Weis
- #330-Animal Control.....................................Leslie Knitig
- #340-Records Clerk.......................................Deb Wassemiller
- #341-Court Clerk/Judge..............................LeAnn Taylor
Click Here to Send Your Comments, Ideas or to Join the Update Mailing List
|
|
