A Newcomer's Take On SLPD's Citizen Academy

Good day to my new community/neighbors!

I'm Michael Allen, a 10 year Bay Area resident that has lived in Rohnert Park, Vallejo, Albany, and now San Leandro. I'm a SoCal (San Diego) transplant.

I intend to post about things that impact my personal understanding of San Leandro and the various communities here, whether it's the SLPD Citizen's Academy, or other goings on around the city. From the very random to long-standing traditions, it'll be up to fate to decide what catches my eye. This is just one family's journey in and around San Leandro.

The opening topic will be the Citizen Police Academy.

I've heard one person under the guise of "resisting/standing up to authority" (paraphrased) basically say that SLPD sucks, the Academy is pointless, that and said bad things about it, nothing can change in 1 year so it's a waste of time to cover, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I see that as a small-minded view with a real black-cloud attitude. It's not my prefered way of living or thinking. Believe me, if I end up sharing the opinion that the department stinks, I wouldn't be shy about saying it!

However, at this point I think I'm leaning toward that critique being the opinion of an unhappy hippie without a cause than fact.

But we'll see, I could always be wrong. After all, I am new to San Leandro.

Briefly, about me, I'm a newcomer to the city which means my vision isn't clouded by someone else or their opinion, nor is it influenced by the past. I get to be me, I get to use my own eyes to evaluate what is presented to me.

Second, I'm level-headed and (hopefully) excel at seeing both sides of the coin. I understand from my own time working with various agencies from federal to local that there are good, and bad departmental representatives, at all levels and in all departments (from administration and records, to judges, Fire/EMS to city manager offices, corporate officers, and even mom and pop operations...).

No one is immune to being self-serving. I plan to just evaluate what I see and based on experience, offer up an opinion. If you're like me, you might agree. If you're a polar opposite, you still might agree with me. All I can promise is to deliver information with minimal spin, and offer up my own two-cents.

I'm going to recap what's taken place so far in my introduction to the SLPD and city manager's office, and then post about the classes weekly.

Any questions you have that you'd like presented to the instructors when we have our classes at 5:30pm on Wednesdays, I'll do my best to deliver and bring back an answer for you to be posted here.

It's really that simple! More to come when I'm not squeezing in a post at lunch.

Stay safe everyone, pleasure to "meet" you all!

-Mike

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