Blog 17 - Interview 4 Reflection

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  
I learned the perspective of a female officer and the difficulties there can be while working as a single mother and an officer.
 
2.  How will what I learned affect my final lesson?
I now have a primary source for my first answer which is about females in law enforcement which should help.

Blog 17 - Interview 3 Reflection

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview? 
I learned that policy changes are actually a constant thing being updated in Law Enforcement and are not just mentioned and gone over in training.

2.  How has your approach to interviewing changed over the course of your senior project?
Not much has changed about my interviewing approach, my whole comfort level with senior project has changed. The only thing that might have changed with my interviewing is probably the fact that I planned it out a bit more. (Sidenote, the individual I had originally planned to interview was unavailable and will probably be interviewed at a later date.)

Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)

Doing mentorship with my mentor consists of ride alongs which can last from eight to ten hours. (Technically you can have different officers depending on the time you go on the ride along meaning I will not only have one mentor.)

2.  How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you?   

I found this mentor through mutual friends and was able to contact them through that. I convinced them to be my mentor by asking nicely if they would be willing to be my mentor. Other mentors I currently have I met because of my families various connections to law enforcement.

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship?  How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person?

My mentor and I are fairly new to each other and it is a bit uncomfortable but still comfortable at the same time. This does not really relate to time spent with them because during ride alongs there is very little talking.

4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?

The interview went well from my point of view. I felt that the answers that were given were very precise and honest. I felt that it was a little rushed because at the time of the interview we had a very little time to talk because of scheduling differences. To change that I will try to do it at a time when we both have more time to talk.

Blog 5 - Interview 1 Reflection

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  Is there anything I would do differently for other interviews?  
I learned that having a setting where the interviewee is comfortable is a definite thing to make sure of. The more comfortable the person you are interviewing is the more likely they will be able to better answer your questions. I found that both interviews went well and I got a lot of useful information from both of the people I interviewed. 

2. Did I get additional resources and contacts?  What is the most useful?  Why?
One of the people I interviewed suggested a few movies and books to look into like The Red Dot Club for instance. He also suggested looking at books and sources that are written by actual police officers rather than people that have never been a police officer. 


3. What makes my interviewee qualified to help me? 
Both of my interviewees were officers. One from LADOT (Los Angeles Department of Transportation) which are the police officers that are known to direct traffic and have been referred to as "Meter Maids". The other interviewee has been a LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) officer for about 29 years and has worked in many divisions in LAPD.

Blog 3 - First Interview Preparation

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  Why?
I plan to interview a police officer from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that is a friend of the family. I plan to interview him because I'm curious about what its like to work at his department and what its like for him to be a police officer that works in Los Angeles.

2. Five questions will be assigned to all seniors to ask.  What additional questions do you plan to ask? 

1. What caused you to want to be a police officer?
2. Where did you do your training for the job?
3. What has the experience been like so far?
4. Do you have a favorite moment or thing about the job? If so what is it?
5. Is there a physical toll on your body from this job?  If so what?
6. Have you had any surgery for injuries that you've gotten from this job? Is so then how many?