Muskego Police Academy: The Experience of a Lifetime

The suspect is walking towards you, and you think he might have a gun.  Draw?  Fire?  Stand down and die?

It’s a life or death decision only you can make in the 10-week Citizen’s Academy course offered by the Muskego Police Department. 

Maureen Busch is one of sixteen graduates who received her certificate of graduation on Wednesday evening, June 4, 2011 at the Moose Lodge in Muskego, and Busch has the bruise to prove it. 

“I’m not a gun person,” she says, as she pulls back her blouse to reveal a bruise on her shoulder blade from the kickback of an AR 15 rifle.  It’s her badge of honor, earned at the Muskego Range on US 45 where the class was trained on shooting live ammunition at targets.

Another graduate, Deb Loomis, was awarded the pin from a flashback grenade, used to distract criminals with a bright flash and loud bang. She received the award, Loomis said, “after I got my criminal square in the personal parts twice during range training. You’re supposed to be aiming chest high,” she admits sheepishly.

The next class starts in September, 2011, and is open to citizens who work or live in Muskego, said Gary Mrotek, instructor.  Mrotek is Muskego’s Crime Prevention and Community Resource Officer, who draws on officers, detectives, dispatchers, and other Muskego law enforcement professionals to teach different sections of the course. 

The most recent class included people aged 22 to 71 and covered search and seizure, making an arrest, patrol procedures, when to use deadly force, and other activities police engage in every day, Mrotek said.

Taking the course makes you “a better witness, an agent for the police, and more empathetic” in understanding and supporting local police, according to Mrotek. 

But talk to the graduates, and you’ll see the adrenalin-rush of adventure in their eyes.  In fact, prior alumni Chantelle Soltysiak and Tatyana Bratishko, who attended the recent graduation, found the class so eye-opening and critical to community safety and preparedness they are starting an alumni group.

 “We want to organize people who are prepared, trained, and can unite everyone,” in an emergency, said Bratishko,  “and make friends and have fun.”

For more information on Citizen’s Academy, Muskego Patch readers can contact Officer Mrotek at (262)679-5653.