Weapons drawn, police officer Mike Ursino was investigating a silent alarm at a large mansion with his partner, when he confronted the two burglars in a darkened bedroom: two 12-year-olds wearing all black.
“They were on an adventure,” Kirkland Lt. Mike Ursino recalled of when he was a raw police recruit at Clyde Hill in 1981. “But what I didn’t understand is that they were on the other side of real weapons.”
The two boys were taken home to their shaken but thankful parents, who understood how much danger the boys were in.
“When you determine there’s a threat, you don’t shoot to wound,” Ursino said to about 20 participants in the Kirkland Police Department’s Citizen’s Academy gathered at Issaquah City Hall on a recent evening, before they decended the stairs to the subterreanian firing range.
During the evening, Kirkland residents tested the department’s Sig Sauer service pistol and the Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun – used by the department’s version of SWAT, the Special Response Team.
Like the city’s Community Emergency Response Team program – which relies on citizen volunteers to bolster the city’s emergency preparedness – the police are hoping to gain support from residents to make Kirkland a safer place in which to live.
Tim Sayer, a 34-year-old aerospace systems salesman, said he thought the program was a great way to understand the responsibilities and role the police serve in the community.
“The cool thing is, you get to see the police officers as real people, not just their uniforms,” he said.
For several years now, police Sgt. Robert Saloum and Neighborhood Resource Officer Allan O’Neill have been working together with the high-energy Ursino to walk residents through a 10-week program designed to give the public a working knowledge of the police department. The participants attend a three-hour class covering the different facets of police work every week.
Guided by the department’s weapon’s specialist Cpl. Dan Willson and Cpl. Nathan Rich, groups of three filed into a sound-proofed firing range and fired several rounds at paper targets.
“The statistics are pretty telling,” Willson said. “Most police shootouts occur at a distance of seven feet or less … We train our people to be gunfighters.”
Shooting the pistols garnered varying reactions from the civilian participants.
“I wasn’t expecting the smell,” said Callie Owen.
Yugoslav-born Ana Marija Ristich, said she had taken classes in pistol marksmanship in elementary school.
“I’ve been looking forward to this, week-to-week,” she said.
Eligibilty to attend the Academy is limited to local residents over 21 years old with no prior felony convictions. For more information, contact Sgt. Robert Saloum or Officer Allan O’Neill by e-mail at rsaloum@ci.kirkland.wa.us and aoneill@ci.kirkland.wa.us or by calling 425-587-3400.
