The Basic Community Supervision Officer Training Course (BCSOTC) is required for every DCS CSO recruit. It takes place at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center (GPSTC). Recruits live at GPSTC Monday through Friday for eight weeks. During this time, they learn critical skills that will keep them and their communities safe.
19 DCS In the Community / September, 2016
stack the pressure
Making the DCS CSO
basic training
In the second week of Basic Training, the recruits spend forty hours training in defensive tactics. These are the moves that will keep officers--and the communities they serve--safe. Every move taught during the training is calculated to most efficiently prevent unnecessary violence in a situation gone bad.
"You want to stack the pressure," Advanced and Specialized Training Instructor Lori Massengale shouts, zeroing in on two "Battle Buddies" across the gymnasium. "It's not about muscle, people. It's about putting pressure on the right places."
This is Massengale's general attitude about officer training. Under her guidance, recruits learn the most efficient and effective tactics to diffuse a situation so they can get back to the real meat of their jobs: helping restore opportunities to the offenders they supervise.
"Basic training is hard. We do the same things over and over and over until it's all muscle memory," Massengale says. "When an officer is in the field and a situation goes downhill, this is what officers rely on: having that training drilled in." By stacking the pressure now, while recruits are still new, Massengale intends to give them the second-nature responses they'll need later on in the field.