Police Academy

Every so often, late in the day (most recently around 7:30 p.m.), as I'm sitting in my apartment, I'll hear the distinctive sound of a group of men (and a lone caller) chanting while jogging through town. The first moment is usually surreal, since the sounds of a military base are so very foreign to this city. I think they must follow a lot of different routes, because months will go by before I hear them near my home. This is why it takes me a moment to remember that there's a police academy in Waterbury. Or, to be more correct, there's a "Recruit Training Facility" run by the Waterbury Police Department. It was started almost two years ago and trains new recruits for Waterbury and other cities in the state. I read about it in the newspaper back when it first opened, which is a lucky thing, otherwise I'd be completely mystified (I can just imagine the stories made up about the joggers by people who don't know we have a police academy!). The funny thing is, there's almost no information about its existence online. A google search pulled up no information; I had to go to the Waterbury police website (which really needs a new webmaster...) and click through a few pages before I found the information.