POLICE ACADEMY ON A BUDGET

In 1963 Chief Ben Caruthers sent Dave Dampier and me to the Broward County Police Academy in Ft Lauderdale. At the time getting to go to a police academy was a novelty. The state didn't require it and most sheriffs and chiefs were again' it. Losing an officer for several weeks just so he can learn his job? Waste of time!

Our salary at the time was about $281 a month. That was for as many hours a day it took in the six-day week. It cost me $100 a week to leave electronics for the police business. But I never regretted it.

The City gave us a per diem budget of $15 a week. We'd get up early Monday morning and drive to Lauderdale, via US 41 and SR 27, in Dave's old Dodge sedan. Wasn't any Alligator Alley. We'd come home on Friday afternoon.

Stretching the $15 was a trick. We rented a cheap room within walking distance of the FLPD. But you have to eat, too. Thank God Dave was a hunter and had a full freezer. I don't know where he got all that deer meat--and I didn't ask--but it kept us alive. And Dave, having grown up in hard times, knew a million ways to vary the menu. We had venison burgers, steaks, stew, soup, you name it. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If we'd have had a freeze he'd have made ice cream out the stuff.

And damned if it wasn't good. But, one night a week we splurged and went to the Burger King for a Whopper and the works. Man does not live by deer meat alone. But he could.

The academy was populated by cops from departments all over South Florida. Many were transplants from big northern cities. One, from New York City, quit in a rage when he found out there wasn't any under the counter money for cops down here. "How the hell they expect me to live on this salary?" he bellowed.

And I remember the day the academy's Director, Lt Bob Smith, later the Ft Lauderdale Chief, interrupted the class with sad news. "President Kennedy's been shot," he said, his voice halting, tears in his eyes, "and it doesn't look like he's going to make it."

We were stunned. No matter what your politics an attack on the President is an attack on our country. There was silence in the classroom until some dope from Plantation asked, "Do that mean we get to go home early?"