Free Trooper Down! by Marie Bartlett

have an electronic siren and public address system. Speakers are mounted under the blue light. Standard equipment includes shotgun and ammunition, axe, riot baton, booster cables, broom, clipboard, crowbar, dosimeter for measuring radioactivity during nuclear spills, first-aid kit, flares, fire extinguisher, gas mask, rain leggings, steel tape, tire chains, tire-tread depth indicator, shovel, wrench, and other assorted tools.
    All of North Carolina’s patrol cars feature high performance 351 engines with a speed capacity of 110 mph. Supporting the electrical equipment is a 100-amp alternator, which runs the siren, radio, and blue light, and allows the vehicle to idle safely for up to two hours. The cars are mounted with standard radial tires and are serviced every 6,000 miles. After 70,000 miles, they are turned in and sold to other state or local agencies.
    The patrol also has a fleet of unmarked cars, including Ford Mustangs and modified LTD Crown Victorias.
    But the Seventy-Ninth School cadets are more than happy with their cars marked “Trooper.” Each has already been assigned a permanent call number and a duty station. Within forty-eight hours, they’ll shed their cadet status and be sworn in as North Carolina highway patrolmen.
    It is a goal they have worked towards for five months and an occasion that none of them will ever forget.
    Friday, February 21, 1987, dawns clear and bright. It is still cold, but much of the ice and snow has melted, allowing families andfriends to arrive at the school safely. Some have traveled to Raleigh from the farthest reaches of the state.
    By eight-thirty that morning, people are milling around the auditorium on the training school campus, though the ceremony doesn’t begin for another hour and a half. There will be standing room only, for the occasion draws not only relatives and friends of the cadets, but the commander of the highway patrol and other high-ranking officers, as well as troopers who’ve come to meet the rookies they are assigned to train.
    â€œDressing for graduation was like getting ready for a high school prom,” recalled a former cadet. “There’s a lot of primping and making sure the uniform and the shoes and hat are just right. Everything has to be perfect. You feel good, and there’s a lot of pride involved. But you’re also a little sad at leaving your friends. These are people you’ve lived with and shared a bond with for the past few months.”
    Shortly before 10:00 A.M.  the cadets file in and take a seat, a solemn, polished-looking group of young rookies, far different in appearance from when they arrived on campus five months earlier.
    â€œYour job won’t be easy,” says Joseph Dean, Secretary of North Carolina Crime Control and Public Safety, addressing the forty-two graduates.
    â€œYou’ll get cold, wet, tired, and frustrated. There will be drunks who’ll want to fight you and people who want to give you lip. But your responsibility is to justice. Be just in the way you enforce the law. Do it fairly, to rich and poor alike, black and white, residents and nonresidents. Testify fairly in court. I’ve been a lawyer and the best testimony I’ve seen comes from highway patrolmen. Their cases are the hardest to break, their reports the most concise and factual. That’s not an accident. It reflects the training you’ve gotten here. Do justice to it, to your fellow officers, and to the highway patrol. It is the family to which you now belong.”
    Other speakers follow, whereupon the cadets stand for the oath of office. By noon, the ceremony and a welcoming tea sponsored by patrol auxiliary wives are over. The cadets, now official members of the North Carolina Highway Patrol, are free to leave. All are scheduled to report for duty within a week at various stations throughout the state.
    Like hundreds of graduates before them, they are eager, earnest,intent on applying the