Willard is a detective with the Lancaster City Bureau of Police. Formerly a patrol officer working 12-hour shifts walking the city, Willard now focuses on auto-theft crimes in the city. Not only does he tell us how to physically prepare for the police force, he runs us through some of the mental requirements, bringing us back to the first crime scene he visited on the job.
Transcript
>> My name's William Smith. I am a Lancaster City police officer. I have been recently reassigned to the detective division. A day for me currently as a patrol officer, I come in, I work a 12 hour shift, and, you know, I help patrol the streets of Lancaster City. And my new assignment coming next month, I'll be a detective and I'll come and I'll do follow ups on cases that have come in, specifically with the auto theft unit for stolen vehicles, chop shops, and things of that nature. Well, Lancaster City's a, is a city of approximately 70,000 residents and that's what we have on books in the census. Maybe between 65 and 70,000 residents. And it's, you know, we're located an hour from Philadelphia, you know, and an hour north of Baltimore, about two and a half, three hours south of New York. So we're kind of a crossroads for people, anybody heading south out of New York or north out of the DC metro area. And, you know, we have our share of crime, it's just on a, in a smaller level. We have our shootings, we have our domestics, and we also have our issues with traffic and parking that I, we have to deal with on a daily basis. And so a day for me can be where, you know, I'm dealing with traffic accidents, like when you have bad weather in the morning, I can deal with a lot of traffic accidents. And that can change quickly with any number of crimes that could happen that, violent crimes like a shooting or a robbery. So, you know, I've seen the whole gamut of crimes from the smallest parking complaint to the most severe shooting or stabbing. So, you know, it's a, it could be a busy day. It could be a long 12 hours or it could be a real quick 12 hours, so. Well, I've been on the job now, I start my 11th year in January. And for me, the first time I arrived on something like that, it's kind of surreal. You're kind of looking at it and you're like, "Wow, this is really happening?" And, you know, but after being on the job ten years, now it's kind of you just go into auto pilot and, you know, you start doing what you got to do to preserve the crime scene, to make sure it's safe for other officers and other first responding personnel to enter the scene. And, you know, making sure that you're talking to the right people. You know, observing, being the trained observer that we're trained to be, you start looking for anything that's out in the open that's obvious. And you have to do, you have to be careful because you don't want to go digging too much because then, you know, you don't want it to contaminate the crime scene or mess something up. So, you know, for me now, being that I've been on the job ten years, is, it's nothing new. Ten years ago, you know, it's kind of like, you know, you're looking, you're seeing things for the first time. So, yeah. It can be, there's a little bit of a shock factor, but then you get over that
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