Shelbyville Police hold first ever 'Citizens Day' inviting community to train with officers

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A few civilians got to experience some of what it's like to be a Shelbyville police officer with a new department training.

It's called "Citizens Day." The day consisted of multiple hours of classroom instruction, practical exercises and skills training. Participants learned at both the department's headquarters on Main Street and on training grounds in a remote area outside of town. 

Chief Bruce Gentry said he had been wanting to hold some sort of training for a while, but knew a multi-day exercise wasn't in the cards.

"Citizens academies are a really long drawn out process, very labor intensive, and I know people are very busy. We’re a small department so staffing, our budget, we really don’t have that kind of budget to be able to run something like that," he said. 

Instead, he and his department came up with the idea to hold an all-encompassing one-day training.  

"You get one incident and another incident and people asking, 'What are y’all doing, what are y’all doing?' We’ve slowly been doing it over the couple years but I was like,  'Hey, they don’t know what we’re doing. They don’t know what’s going on in their police department,'" Gentry said.

Attendees were mainly community leaders. They had the opportunity to fire a BYRMA non-lethal pepper spray gun, as well as a firearm with training rounds. They also operated a police cruiser with lights and a siren, and engaged in theoretical scenarios in which they were the police officer.

Participants were also given duty belts with training weapons and ranked on their reaction times and accuracy shooting on target. 

"The take away is physically hopefully they’ll feel the effects of responding to the scene like an officer would," he said. "Going to the scene with limited knowledge, encountering somebody, and then maybe not being able to handle it exactly the way they think they could behind the remote on a TV."

Gentry said he hoped participants would be encouraged to take what they learned back into the public to help educate those around them. 

One of those who participated Friday was Ashley Coulter. Coulter works with Shelby County Parks and said she wanted to join the training because she often has to interact with police in her role.

"We’re constantly interacting with the public and we’re constantly calling on our police and sheriffs departments to assist us with situations. I think it’s just a different view on some of the things they’re dealing with that sometimes we may be scared of at work and just the severity that things can escalate quickly," she said. 

Coulter was given a duty belt which weighed nearly 20 pounds when packed with training equipment. She was then told to respond to a mock dispatch call for a welfare check. 

When she arrived on scene, an adult male had a large piece of wood and was waving it around while speaking another language. As she worked to de-escalate the situation, another male subject appeared shouting at her and recording her movements with his phone. 

"It was really eye opening. I think that sometimes we take for granted how many factors our police are dealing with," she said. "I felt like I was looking in many different directions. I felt like I was having to watch the sides and forward and check on my partner." 

Moving forward in her daily life, Coulter said she looks forward to being able to use her training to inform others on what the Shelbyville Police Department does to prepare for real emergencies. 

"Education I think is important on any career aspect. I think it’s easier when you understand more, you’re able to help explain to people why maybe things were done the way they were instead of maybe drawing your own judgements," she said. 

Shelbyville police said it hopes to expand its training later this year to incorporate even more members of the general public. 

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