Congrats!

CONGRATULATIONS everyone!! We made it! Good luck in your next endeavors! Make sure you take time to celebrate your big accomplishment. Not a lot of people work as hard and sacrifice as much as you did to accomplish graduating with a college degree! I hope to meet you all at graduation! Go ASU Class of 2015!!!

THANK YOU!!!!

Dear Tobie,

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity of being your intern for a semester. Over our lovely 300 plus hours together you have taught me so much. You have taught me what a crime analyst does and how rewarding that career is. You have also given me advice for personal things I went through this semester. Thank you for giving me all the assignments that you did, it helped me in so many ways. I was able to brush up on my excel skills and learn different skills, and added even more skills for different computer programs as well.

I also want to thank you for taking me to different meetings and introducing me to different people within the department. It was an eye opening experiance and made me more comfortable in introducing myself to people. A big thank you for helping me schedule an interview with Chief Meza for my midterm assignment.

Lucky you I am not leaving you yet. Im so excited that I will still be able to volunteer with you after graduation. Im excited because it will give me an opportunity to learn even more.

See you soon!


Thank you,

Tiana Tafoya

My internship is a nutshell...

I learned a lot from my internship. I learned better communication skills, I learned how to use different computer programs, I learned more about police departments and how they are ran, I learned more about the criminal justice program, and most importantly I learned what I want to do when I grow up. I want to be in Law Enforcement. For a long time I struggled with if I want to do this or that or something that was not revelant to what I was going to school for.

I have decided that I do not want to be a sworn officer but I want to be on the civilian side of Law Enforcement. The civilian side is just as important as the sworn side. There are many opportunities through the civilian side in a large city police department.

My goal at the beginning of the semester was to find something I was passionate about or to decide that Law Enforcement was not for me. I have learned so much this past semester and I know that I belong in the Law Enforcement field. I  love it. It is something that I am very passionate about. I have always had an interest in this field since I was little and now that I have the education and have some experience in it I know that I was right all along and there is no greater feeling than that!

Career Service #2

For my second career service assignment I decided I was going to call and make an appointment with someone to go over my resume with me. When I went to the first career workshop they touched base with a resume but I wanted someone to go over and help me with my personal resume.

I met with Sydney at the downtown campus and she was a lot of help. She gave me a lot of hints and told me what to include and what to take off my resume. She went over every section and provided me feedback. This was really helpful and helped take off some of the stress with writing a resume. The most helpful advice she gave me was when putting my experience down to include skills and accomplishments with it. She explained to start with an action verb, then talk about a project, then to include what the results were for that specific project.

I think the services that the career service department offers are really helpful! I really liked being able to meet with someone one on one to talk about what I needed help on.

If you haven't had an appointment I highly recommend it. It is really helpful!

Strengths with the MPD

The Mesa Police Department shows many strengths throughout the whole department. In the department there are many difference departments that deal with certain crimes for example: homicide, metal thefts, sex crimes, property crimes etc. This allows people to only be assigned to certain crimes and it allows the department to be more efficient with the crimes happening. Having all of these different departments allows the officers to spend the time needs on the crimes they are assigned to and not spending themselves too thin trying to work on all the crimes that happen within the city.

Another strength that Mesa has is having multiple crime analyst. These analysts are also assigned to different tasks which allows them to be more efficient. The analyst really helps out the deceives, sergeants, and lieutenants with special projects. I really had no idea what a crime analyst was until I interned with Tobie. It is amazing to me how much she does and how much it truly makes a difference.

Demonstrating Public Service

My internship shows public service in many ways.. The most obvious would be being a police department. The MPD has one of the most efficent organizations I have seen. The MPD shows public service by not only offering police services but getting involved in the community in any way they can. Mesa has been really successful in their community policing. They hold different events for people to come and meet their officers that are patrolling their community.

One of the biggest ways I believe that MPD shows public service is by having such a big volunteer program. They allow the volunteers to work in many different parts of the police department. I find that this is very benefical because it attracts more volunteers, which leads to more people volunteering their time to give back to the community and is helping the city of Mesa save money. It is very rewarding to be a volunteer and to feel like you are making a difference and being able to give back. When I go to meetings with Tobie people ask who I am and when I say I am apart of the VIPS program they thank me for my time. Amazing right? Everyone knows at the MPD how valuable volunteers are and they appreciate and show appreciation to all the volunteers.

Leadership

In my internship I see leadership from people I work with everyday. My supervisor Tobie shows a lot of leadership by always helping other analyst and helping people who she doesn't have to help. The detectives that are in the same building show leadership of always doing the things that need to be done in their unit. Leadership is an important skill to have when working in a police department. You have to be a leader and a good leader for people to follow and do what you need them to do to help the community be a safer place.

I show leadership in my internship by coming in and being ready to work on whatever Tobie needs me to do that day. Most of the time I come in I go straight to work reading calls for service and updating the metal lists without Tobie having to instruct me. The past couple of months I have taken charge and started creating contact books for metal, adult, and child contacts. These books take a lot of work and time. Tobie and her supervisors were impressed on all the work I have done to create those books.

I have definitely learned different leadership qualities and styles through my internship!