For an out of town visitor, Carson City is a pretty friendly place to be.
The last three weeks, the Carson City Sheriff’s Office had two German police cadets, Christian and Tobias training with them in order to gain new perspective, technique and understanding of foreign policing.
The two are cadets in the police academy in Germany, and as part of their training they were able to come to America to further their police training in a foreign country. They trained with all the departments in the Sheriff’s Office as well as with the Department of Corrections, Nevada Highway Patrol and Juvenile Probation.
“It was a blast to have them here,” said Sheriff Ken Furlong. “It also allowed us to flex some of our rarely used talents in the department, including our German speaking officers.”
The officers were utilized nearly seven days a week for the three weeks, in order to try to get them exposed to as many opportunities as possible.
“It was a good experience,” said Christian. “They kept us so busy we didn’t really have time to be tired.”
The officers said their experience was enlightening, and there were many differences between policing in America and the training they received in Germany. Tobias said one difference they noticed was the gun ownership in America.
“In Germany not every citizen has weapon and that makes different circumstances here,” Tobias said. “You act differently when you know everyone has a gun. You will act differently with like traffic stops and things.”
They said another difference was how the police are treated in America.
“The big difference is the sense of community,” Tobias said. “Here people say thank you to the officers and that would never happen in Germany. People are not as nice in Germany. It was good to see how it could be.”
“It was a sensation, the cops here don’t know they have a privilege if they saw how other systems work,” Christian added.
Christian said before they came to Carson, they thought the officers used more force during their duties.
“We had an interesting conversation with an NHP Trooper, because he said that he thought in Germany if a civilian yelled at us, we went and would like smash them on the corner for street credibility or something, but that is not it,” Christian said. “We had actually thought that is what happened here before we came. But this was enlightening, not as much violence as we thought we would see here for three weeks.”
The two said they learned a lot of training they would bring back to Germany to utilize in their training.
“We liked the first aid training,” Tobias said. “The tourniquet training was something we don’t really get, and they even gave us some to take home, which we will start carrying with us now.”
Furlong said as much training and opportunity the two Germans got, the Carson department benefited greatly as well from the trip.
“They served as much benefit to our officers and organization as they hoped we would to them,” said Furlong. “… Both of them left us with an impression of professional and dignified officers representing their country very well.”
Overall, the two greatly enjoyed their training with Carson and are ready to take their new experiences back home with them.
“If we could, we would take a bunch of the deputies here back to Germany, the way they work and the motivation,” Christian said. “The motivation is much higher here.”
Their trip wasn’t all work though, the two officers were able to take several day trips to Lake Tahoe, as well as experiencing several Carson events such as Taste of Downtown, National Night Out and the vice presidential candidate Mike Pence’s visit. The two said they enjoyed everything they experienced and couldn’t choose their favorite thing they did here.
“Carson City is very special,” Christian said. “It is a family community and they should keep the small town setting, we liked it.”
“The social cultural experience I think is what they will remember forever,” Furlong said.
Tobias said they were surprised by how warm of a welcome the two received when they first got to Carson.
“We were surprised by the friendliness of the American citizens,” Tobias said. “We had not expected that coming in.”
“We had people recognize us in Wal-Mart and said hi when we were here for only a few days,” Christian added. “… We had this prejudice that Americans were shallow but people were really interested in us and asking us questions, and not just the police but the whole community.”
