03/09/2026 to 03/15/2026
2026 Marching Band 🥁, Firearms Qualification, EVOC 🚔, Fiddler On The Roof🎻
2026 Marching Band 🥁, Firearms Qualification, EVOC 🚔, Fiddler On The Roof🎻
Andrew found out on Monday that the 2026 GR Marching Band Show will be called “WinterSpell.” ❄️ 🥁 Dale Gunderson, Director, Exclusively For Wes Cartwright, Fred J. Miller Inc. I put together an Apple Music playlist “WinterSpell” featuring the following pieces that will be in the performance; “Heart of Courage” by Thomas Bergerson, “WinterSpell” by Thomas Bergerson, “Winter” by Tori Amos, and “160BPM” by Hans Zimmer.
It was the last week of DRPD Phase 1 FTO for me! Next week will start Phase 2, I’ll be back in uniform and on the board. 👮♂️
On Tuesday I qualified with handgun, rifle, & shotgun. The DRPD range is really nice for training, it is spacious, super high berms, and remote. There still was a considerable amount of crusty snow on the ground which made movement difficult. The training still felt natural after my absence and my overall ability/performance was satisfactory except for splitting my lower lip open with the butt of my rifle. You can never train too much. 👉☝️
Wednesday after work, I drove down to St. Cloud, stayed in a hotel, and then completed EVOC on Thursday. The driving range is located across Hwy 10 from the St. Cloud State Penitentiary. 🚓🚔 I selected squad # 12, a Ford Police Explorer, for the course.
To start things off, a water tanker-truck dumped water all over the skid pad and we then practiced forcing our squads to activate stability/traction control so we could feel what that was like. I was actually unable to get my squad to skid which was a little disappointing.
We practiced reaction time and accident avoidance while distracted driving. The exercise starts out with an instructor in a tower, you in a squad car, and a single straight lane that splits into three lanes. The three lanes are controlled by a set of overhead lane control lights that are controlled by the instructor in the tower. The instructor radios the exact speed to the driver. There is radar speed display facing the driver right before the lane splits. The driver must be driving at the specified speed when entering the lane split. The instructor in the tower randomly closes all but one lane at the exact moment the driver approaches the lane split. We also performed the exercise with lights, siren, and talking on the police radio.
We also practiced threshold braking as opposed to full ABS braking, three-point-turns, diminishing lanes, serpentine and backing through a serpentine, high speed backing. The final exercise was a code 3 run in which I had zero errors for timed (3:45), and zero errors for a 35 MPH run (4:03). There were 22 officers with 19 mistakes on the code 3 and 7 mistakes on the speed-capped run. Overall, other than knocking over a few cones, dragging some cones, running through a set of lane closure lights, and failing to follow some minor directions during initial practice, I did quite well. 👍
Friday evening after work, I met Tiffany for Chinese food and we then met Andrew at the Reif and watched Fiddler on The Roof. I made it through the first half and then bailed for home. Tiffany and Andrew made it through the second half.
End of blog. Thank you for reading!
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