Officer Steven Meador, right, and other members of the graduating police academy class, recite their oath during the ceremony Thursday at Chattanooga State.Clayton Smith stands a full head below several of the other officers in his police academy graduating class, but his reassuring, confident personality allows him to come off much taller.
The former soldier and class president of the year's first police academy - the second in six months - was excited for the chance to start making Chattanooga's streets safer, but mostly proud of his fellow classmates.
"Getting a group of guys to work together as a team can be a real challenge, but we hit it off very quickly," he said. "I was honored for the opportunity."
The night wasn't just a big deal for the graduates, it was a big deal for the city, too. The Chattanooga police force is down about 54 officers from the 500-strong group Chief Bobby Dodd would like to see, and loses about 20 more every year because of retirement and career changes.
Dodd said he was proud of the graduates, and hopes more people will join the force - particularly women and minorities the department is lacking.
"It's a tough job. It's a good job. It's a rewarding job," he said to a packed auditorium at Chattanooga State Community College. "If you hang in there, it's a good career, it's a rewarding career."
This academy, the first of what will likely be two this year, is graduating seven minority cadets - five black men and two of Asian descent - but no women.
"It's a concern," Dodd said. "Right now our department is a little less than 16 percent minority representation, and with Chattanooga being at 30 percent, I'd like to see at least that."
A class of 22 graduated in January and is just finishing up field training, and Dodd hopes to start a new academy in September. But staff shortages mean plenty of eyes still will be watching the 20 graduates as they spend the next 16 weeks training in the field.
But Smith isn't feeling the pressure.
"We don't really consider that," he said. "We just go out to the academy and do our jobs."
Chattanooga police spokeswoman Sgt. Jerri Weary said there's no doubt about how prepared this class is. The city's 20-week-long academy - almost twice as long as the average across the country - consists of hours on driving courses, shooting ranges and in classrooms.
Over the next four months, the graduates' training will continue as new officers ride along with their more experienced counterparts, learning to apply in the field skills they learned in the academy.
"Classroom learning is very different from being on the street," Weary said.
There's no doubt police training is not easy. Just to make it into the academy, the roughly 250 applicants had to go through interviews and written, agility and polygraph tests. Three of the initial 24 would-be officers who made the cut washed out of the academy in the first week of training. They were replaced by the next week, but the replacements washed out in the same amount of time.
A seventh officer was called to serve in the army and wasn't able to finish training.
As the graduates hit the street, Weary said some quickly learn police work isn't what they thought it would be.
"A lot of them have this ideology of what police work is because of TV shows," she said. "When they get out in the field and have to deal with people face to face, it's sometimes something that they can't do."
But following the success of the previous class, the department has high hopes this class will succeed.
Dodd certainly trusts them. During the cadet's training, he perched high up on a balance beam and did a trust fall into the arms of his new officers.
"I weigh 250 pounds and I said, 'Guys, this isn't one of your 145 pound cadets,' but they caught me," he said. "There wouldn't have been a second, trust me."