You also learn that a new facility has just been built by a contractor who will lease the building to the state. The new station is about a mile down the road and it's ready to be occupied. Your first assignment is to leave the uniform at home and show up ready to move everything out and into the new facility. It will take two days. When you finish the move and on your first day reporting to duty you stand in front of the building and have a picture taken in uniform. The background is the state seal.
Despite the elation of having graduated, been assigned, located housing and generally not been run off....the fact is you know nothing about police work. The training and education you get is just enough to get you in trouble. In trouble by thinking you are capable of something you most certainly aren't, in trouble by having no knowledge of local procedures, in trouble by not being familiar with area residents who largely support your agency but when push came to shove will side with any members of their family first. You also need to learn the pet peeves of each supervisor and how to stay on their good side. Especially, the Sargeant who makes out your schedule.
There is a break in period where you are considered a probabtionary Trooper. Your are assigned to ride with a more experienced "road dog" who is supposed to show you the ropes and teach you enough to stay out of trouble and stay alive. The area is so sparsely populated that there isn't even a midnight patrol except on weekends. A Trooper spends the night in the building answering the phone and deciding whether someone will need hauled out of bed to respond to an incident. That potential responder will have worked the 3-11 shift and taken the car home with him. He is usually also working the 7-3 shift the following morning. It doesn't take long for you to figure out that calling the "on call" Trooper is something that is not done without absolute necessity.
The coach/trainee system is designed to root out probationary troopers who just won't cut it. Most often it will be the lack of timely reporting that will tangle them up. The report system is still functioning under the carbon copy method of triplicate with each copy to be forwarded to a different location after completion. It is a burdensome holdover from years of military influence. Computers have not yet been incorporated. Your first coach is a stickler for completing paperwork immediately after it is a requirement. He is a strange recently divorced hermit who lives in a house deep up a holler tucked in the mountains. You learn that many of the current Troopers spent time in Vietnam and predictably, have their issues. But they meet the criteria laid out for law enforcement in rural America. They are capable of handling anything on their own. It might not be as per regulation on paper but they know how to quash an insurrection by simple will and brute force. And they know how to report what happened.....clear and concise. Not too much and not too little.
Your second coach is only on the job three years but you realize that he is both easy going and fully capable when challenged. He is able to talk his way out of difficulty and fight his way out of a bar. Mostly though, he is interested in the wildlife and learning the ins and outs of fly fishing. It will be an endeavor that will lead him to a chance encounter with the 39th President of the United States. He becomes an outdoorsman, photographer, writer and environmentalist of some prominence in the county. He kindles a friendship with you that lasts a lifetime.
Climbing in a patrol car for the first shift on your own and responsible for a large area, you can't help but feel intimidated. Will you be able to be fair and make good decisions. Can you develop a repoir with the locals? What awaits you? The only tools you have at your disposal is your marked patrol car, a radio that has two channels, a hand held repeater which doesn't work when you get more than a hundred yards from the car, a wooden night stick, handcuffs, and a .357 caliber Ruger revolver with a speed strip of six rounds. That means you have twelve total rounds with which to defend yourself should it come to that. Shotguns have to be signed out. Some do, some don't. Rifles are 30.06 caliber with open sights. They mostly remain in the armoury.
Your mind is constantly stirring up scenarios. You think of some of the worst ones. Shootings, fatal accidents, missing children......and the silence is broken by the crack of the radio. Central to Central 2. "Central 2. Go ahead." Central 2, we have an incident for you.