Yvette Walker
With 91.9 KVCR News, I'm Yvette Walker. This is IE Latino Voices where we invite representatives from Latino led and Latino serving organizations to share their stories and their impact in our region. Today we've invited Chief Marcelo Blanco of the Upland Police Department. Thank you for being with us today, Chief Blanco.
Chief Blanco
Thank you for having me.
Yvette
Please share a bit about what inspired you to pursue a career in law enforcement.
Blanco
I knew that I had to do something right out of high school, whether it was go into the military to get some college or things of that nature. I was very fortunate that I was doing an intern job at the police department in my senior year in Upland, so they offered me a job after I graduated high school. And at that point, I figured, okay, with the money I was making, I could afford to go to Chaffey College, which was a requirement that you have to attend college to be a cadet. And at that point, I put aside my Air Force plans and joined the police department. And I've been there ever since, for a total of 32 years right now. And it's just been a wonderful career.
Yvette
Please talk about the training that is involved with becoming part of a police department. To become a police officer.
Blanco
You have to go to the police academy. There's a few options with that. One option is a six month police academy you go in day in and day out. It costs a little bit, about 3000 or so dollars for the schooling part of it. And then six months of pretty much you're not doing a whole lot of anything but going to the police academy. So, if you don't have the support basis for that, or a police department hasn't hired you and put you through the academy, it's going to be a pretty difficult process. The second one is an extended academy, which is what I ended up doing. I was working full time, I was helping to support my parents and I couldn't afford to just say I'm going to stop working for six months. And at the time police departments were not hiring people and paying for them to go through the academy. I actually attended here at San Bernardino Valley College, it was about a nine month program, a few days during the week in the evenings, and then on the weekends.
Yvette
Beautiful. What are some of the programs within the department that people would be surprised to learn about?
Blanco
So we have quite a few programs. We have a ride along program, which our residents or business owners can ride in a police car with a police officer and go to the calls that they go to. We have a Citizens Academy. So usually it's retired individuals that come to the police department and learn about the background of a police department. It's about a 10 week program. We have a volunteer program. So normally, after you've completed the Citizens Academy, it’s usually, again, senior volunteers. They need something to do and you know, we love the extra free help at the police department. You know, they can help out whether it's to help our records personnel, go out in the field and do what we call our vacation checks. So, when people go on vacation, they call us and say, “Hey, can you check our house, make sure that the newspapers or the mail isn't piling up?”
So our senior volunteers will go drive around, make sure everything's okay. And then we have our Explorer Program for our youth. So it's between 14 and a half to 21. The whole idea is to take the youth from the community that are interested in law enforcement and see if this is what they really want to do. They have to exercise like if they were at a police academy. They get what we call verbal encouragement. Sometimes, you know, people will consider they're getting yelled at. And they're getting classroom instruction from our police officers. So that's a great opportunity that even if they don't choose law enforcement as a career, they've learned those things, and they're going to be an asset to any organization they work for.
Yvette
Please share about the proudest moment you have experienced in your life in law enforcement, and what advice you would give to anyone looking to pursue a life in law enforcement.
Blanco
I spent about five years of my career teaching the DARE program in schools, you know, Drug Abuse Resistance Education. And it taught kids about not getting involved with drugs and not getting involved with gangs. And I remember, as a field supervisor, I was on a call, and here's this individual that was just standing out in the sidewalk in the corner for quite a while. And I kept wondering, I wonder what are they doing here? Right? Because they're not part of the call. They were just hanging out. And I could remember that call took about 30 minutes to handle. And when I was done, and I was walking back to my car, that person came up to me. He goes, “Hey, do you remember me? You taught me DARE. And you know, I appreciate everything you did. So to me, it must have made an impact, right? Because they waited all that time. They could have just came up and said hey, he's busy. Let me just walk away and leave. But they didn't. They came up and they said thank you for what you did. So this is truly one of those careers that you may not see it right off the bat. But if you're in it long enough, you're going to find out the positive impact that you make on somebody. Part of what I also did was teach ROP classes for about 15 plus years of my career. And I'm very fortunate that four of the students that I taught when they were in high school now work for me today. As far as advice to someone that's looking to get in this career - Biggest thing is make sure you stay out of trouble. Hopefully you haven't had any arrests in your past because we're going to look into, you know, the things that you've done in the past including drug use, looking at your bank account, looking at all these other things. It's important that you pay your bills on time. And again, it doesn't mean you're going to get disqualified if you had some hiccups along the way. We evaluate everything on a case by case basis. The whole idea is to try to live your life in an exemplary manner, and keep those hiccups to a minimum. And if you've had them, be upfront about them, because one of the things that gets people in trouble is they try to hide the fact that they had a mistake in their life. And then when it comes out, we can't continue to move forward because they lied in the process. We hire from the human race. We're all humans, we make mistakes. We look at those mistakes on a case by case basis. And we've hired people that have made mistakes that they figured it out and now they're wonderful police officers.
Yvette
Thank you so much for being with us today, Chief Marcelo Blanco.
Blanco
Thank you very much Yvette, I really appreciate it.
Yvette Walker
Join us again next week for IE Latino Voices. You can find this story and others on our website at kvcrnews.org/ielatinovoices. IE Latino Voices is produced by KVCR Public Media, and is funded by generous support from the CIELO fund at IECF, uplifting and investing in the IE’s Latino community. For KVCR News, I'm Yvette Walker.
