'Forensic Fridays' connect students and law enforcement in the classroom

GILLETTE —Jack Otte laid face down on the ground in the Campbell County High School parking lot.
Although the temperature that morning was only about 65 degrees, the teen was sweating under the weight of 80 pounds of gear — bomb squad gear.
The kevlar suit that Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Hieb and Capt. Kevin Theis put on him just minutes before, complete with a chest plate, helmet, pants and coat, would protect him from blasts of C4 or grenades, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable.
“Alright, now you have to stand up on your own,” Theis said to Otte. “That’s how you pass the test.”
“And that’s the benefit of youth,” he added, as Otte scrappily pushed himself up onto his knees and hopped, albeit a little roughly, to his feet.
Otte had volunteered to try on the bomb suit as part of the weekly Forensic Friday unit that has developed in Dusty DeBoer’s justice class.
Every week, Sheriff’s Office employees give — without fail —  a hands-on, interactive presentation of sections within the department. The presentations range from the bomb squad, to SWAT, to mock crime scenes, culminating with a full tour of the Sheriff’s Office at the end of the semester.
DeBoer and Sheriff Scott Matheny worked together to kick off the cooperative learning between deputies and students in an effort to showcase all that law enforcement officers do in their day-to-day job but also to build relationships between students and those who choose to protect them.
For some, the call to law enforcement is limited by the belief that those in the departments have only one job — something Matheny himself once believed.
He began his career as an accountant, content crunching numbers and balancing the cash, but one day a past sheriff approached him about working in law enforcement.
“All you do is just write tickets,” Matheny told the man. But he later found, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
From the beginning of his work in the sheriff’s office, Matheny said he has worked to expand students’ and community members’ understanding of what it is that the department is in charge of every day.
Now, Matheny starts every presentation he gives in the classroom with a simple question: “What do you think law enforcement does?”
That is something DeBoer wanted to highlight as he began teaching his first justice class about five or six years ago.
“I wanted to revamp and do different things in the class,” DeBoer said. 
And so, he met with Matheny to put together a catch-all of what goes on in different first responder jobs.
“There’s a lot of different aspects to law enforcement,” he said. “You don’t have to just write tickets. You can specialize.”
Throughout the week, students study criminals like Jack the Ripper and Bonnie and Clyde, but on Fridays they experience what it’s like on the other side of the law.
In the alliteratively termed Forensic Friday classes, different deputies, sergeants and captains come in to give an overview of their specific tasks. The SWAT team normally brings its tank; the bomb squad brings explosive tools; a mock crime scene is examined, and drug investigations are explained.
Then, the students come back and look at what could have been done differently with their past criminal cases, if those in the olden days had the same resources and technology used today.
It’s a time for students to learn and experience firsthand an occupation they may not have known existed and also, a way for those in the sheriff’s office to mingle with students in a positive way.
“Some of the kids, they think officers are jerks because they gave them a ticket,” DeBoer said. “This brings (law enforcement) in so kids can see that they’re normal people that are keeping the community as safe as they can. It helps form that positive relationship between the two.”
Matheny said that he’s seen the impact the classes have on the students through his hiring process, as well.
“Because of (the class), a dozen local kids that graduated through local schools are now interested in law enforcement,” he said.
He believes the positive rapport built in the classroom has also helped with crime prevention, pointing out that when deputies are out on a call, locals tend to help them with a suspect versus the other way around.
And the students enjoy the class, too.
Theis and Hieb didn’t have to call for the students’ attention once on Friday.
Hands were raised to volunteer for demonstrations and students even asked questions as they looked at and drove the departments’ 350-pound hazardous materials robot around.
“It’s fun to just ask really random questions,” Sylvia McClure said about the classes with law enforcement.
She asked about the cost of the robot and received an honest answer.
The robot that the department received in 2004 cost $134,000 and was paid for by a Homeland Security grant. With all of the upgrades over the years, the robot is now valued at $350,000.
“It’s crazy that it’s worth more than even houses,” McClure added.
She and others said they’ve learned more about positions they hadn’t really heard of before, but the most exciting part of the period came when Hieb came out of the bomb squad trailer with a detonating cord and primed it for use in the school’s football field. A few students looked to their teacher with questioning eyes, as they followed the unknown leader.
“This isn’t amateur hour,” DeBoer explained, as he walked with his students. “We’re going to blow something up.”
That cleared up the confusion, and as Hieb yelled “Fire in the hole” and a blast resonated through their bones, the students cheered and gasped. That’s the moment they learned the difference between an explosive tool, something that is used to explode other explosives, versus a bomb, which is something that’s formed for “ill intent,” Theis said.
In the future, Matheny hopes to expand the program to Wright and Thunder Basin High School in an effort to reach even more students within the county while garnering excitement and understanding for a department he once knew slim to none about but now finds passion in every day.
For the students, the Forensic Fridays will remain an incentive to come to class, while expanding knowledge of who combats harm in the community and how it is accomplished.
 
This story was published on Sept. 20, 2022.