By LYNETTE SOWELL
The Belton Journal
Last Friday morning, the Central Texas College Police Academy held a graduation ceremony for 26 cadets that made up the Class of 2025 Charlie Class.
Among the cadets were William Frame and Justin Jaccaud. The two joined the ranks of the Copperas Cove Police Department on Friday during a swearing-in ceremony held at CTC’s board room immediately after the graduation ceremony.
Jaccaud had the distinction of being named class president. His fellow cadets chose him because he was the person they would most like to have back them up on a serious call, said Academy Director Clifton Osborne.
“Throughout the entire academy Cadet Jaccaud would share the study guide, shared it with everyone in the class. He was always the first one to volunteer for any extra duty. The entire class looked up to him.”
Jaccaud gave the Class President’s address during the ceremony. He said that 26 strangers turned into a family, a dysfunctional one at times, he joked, but nonetheless a family.
“We pushed each other, we held each other accountable, and we lifted each other up. And most of all, when one of one of us struggled, the rest of us refused to let them fail,” Jaccaud said.
“Today is not the finish line. It’s the starting point. The learning doesn’t stop here. The training doesn’t stop here. The responsibility only goes from here. As we move into field training with our agencies, we will face moments that test our judgment, our courage and our character, but we’re ready, because this academy prepares not just to do the job, but to honor the badge out there. We are the calm in the chaos. We are the steady voice in crisis. We are the line that stands between fear and safety and every call, every contact, every decision, is an opportunity to make someone’s darkest moments a little brighter.”
Lt. Martin Ruiz with the Copperas Cove Police Department said a few words about each of the new officers prior to the pinning ceremony after the graduation.
“I don’t know a whole lot about (Officer Frame) within the academy, but we hired him at the academy. What I do know is, he’s very persistent. He has applied before, and he did not stop. This is the only place he wants to work. I got to know him through the process, and the more I got to know him, the more I know why some of our officers that work with us now actually recommended him when him and Mr. Jaccaud were in the academy together,” Ruiz said.
“I told (Jaccaud) on the very first day when he got hired, ‘Your job when you go to the academy is to recruit.’ And the only person he gave a name to was Frame. He and said he was a good guy and that everybody respected him, and to get (Jaccaud’s) respect, it takes a lot….I got to know Frame, and the more I get to talk to him, he is a really good guy, so hopefully he stays with us like he said, he’s going to retire here.”
Next came Officer Santos, who is already a certified officer who comes from Jonestown. She was not among the graduates but applied separately.
“When she applied, I actually looked at her application, and I said to myself, ‘I don’t know why she wants to be a police officer, because she has a doctorate.’ So, I thought she’d be a doctor…I don’t know a whole lot about her, but throughout the process, she was very, very professional with our board. They were very impressed with her. She did really, really well.”
Lastly, Ruiz talked about Officer Jaccaud.
“When he first applied with us, I told him, ‘You and I are going to get to know each other really, really well. And another thing you get to know really well is the rower.’ And he did. And every time he worked out, he wanted to show me proof. He would always send me a picture. He proved it in October. We had our qualifications for our rower and he got 100%.”
Ruiz joked with Jaccaud, saying he “let him down a little bit” by not winning the academic award like he told Ruiz he would.
The three were then sworn in by Chief of Police Eddie Wilson, who talked about what the police officer’s badge represents.
“The badge represents a lot of things. There’s a lot of symbolism. There’s a lot of things that come with that badge. But the one item that I want to talk about is trust,” Wilson said.
“In all transparency and all honesty, this is a proud moment for me. I’m always proud to see new officers, new energy coming into our organization, but I can’t say that’s what I’m most proud of today. It might sound corny, I’ve been doing this a really long time, but probably the thing I’m proud of most every day is getting to put my badge on, coming to the office, coming to work, and representing all of those that I just introduced to you, representing our community, representing our city, representing our council.
“I take great pride in it, because there’s a lot of trust that comes with it. This is the only time the three of you will be given an object that when you put it on, you get automatic trust. They’ve done nothing up to this point to really earn it. Again, I couldn’t always say that, because that’s not the way it was in our organization for a really long time. The badge didn’t necessarily represent trust. It represented work to do.
“Now I’m not saying that it’s unique to every law enforcement badge that’s out there. I’m saying it’s just unique to the one that says Copperas Cove Police Department. I can’t speak for other organizations.”
He said that the department has come a long way in working on the trust of the community.
“That has been demonstrated, the analytics on how people trust us. Last year, we asked our taxpayers to help us get to market, because we’ve been behind market, behind compensation with comparable organizations such as ours.
“So we had to ask our citizens to please support us in getting our officers to market. That’s a big ask. We’re asking you to vote to raise taxes. Who wants that? No one, but they came out and overwhelmingly supported us and said yes. If it would have happened 15 years ago, they would not have said that.”
Chief Wilson said that the badge instills trust because of the work that has been done to get to that point.
“The key takeaway here is, any one of these three, any one of these other officers, it only takes one of us to do it… and that bucket of trust suddenly starts spilling out.
“It’s imperative that the three of you understand that we put a lot of work into our community, and the expectation is that three of you help us to continue to elevate that level of trust. You’re never done working on trust. Sometimes you lose it in little drips. Sometimes you lose it on the bucket loads.
“And it’s something that I won’t take for granted. Certainly the ones standing on that back wall don’t take it for granted. So with that, this isn’t an ask, it’s not a directive. It’s a demand. It’s a demand. We do things as a family. We do things a little bit different than other agencies. In Copperas Cove, we are very unique in the way we police our community. “I’ve already seen Officer Jaccaud step up to what our vision, what our mission is, and how we serve our community. Our police department is not just about writing tickets. It’s not just about taking people to jail, because if that’s all we did, it’s really hard to arrest somebody and then expect them to trust you after that. It’s hard to hand out tickets and expect them to trust you after that, so we have to do a lot of other work to humanize ourselves.
“Congratulations again. Welcome to our team. I look forward to great things that you guys are going to do next.”
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