Illinois native Emily Konior was working for the Transportation Security Administration in Birmingham, Alabama, when she was hired in March as an officer with Columbus Police Department, the department she’d been wanting to work for in the town she had been wanting to live.
“Once I got hired on officially, the next day I was moving out,” she said.
She and 11 other cadets have since completed the police academy in Moorhead where Konior was named top cadet in a class of more than 30, Assistant Police Chief Fred Shelton said.
Chief Oscar Lewis recognized Konior for that accomplishment at a welcoming ceremony for the new officers at CPD headquarters Monday. Konior’s achievement is based on a combination of physical training, firearms training and academic scores.
“We had several of these guys giving her competition on that, but she came out on top,” Lewis said.
Lewis also singled out Raymond Cyr, the cadet with the fastest time in the five-mile at 37 minutes, 30 seconds, when introducing all 11 newly minted CPD officers.
Of the 12 graduating cadets CPD sent to the academy, one resigned to take a job at her hometown on the coast, Lewis said. Still, the 11 new officers bolster the force to 63, just four short of filling the budgeted roster.
In late 2016, CPD’s numbers had dwindled to 44 officers, prompting University of Memphis Criminology and Criminal Justice chairman K.B. Turner — whom the city council hired in January as a consultant — to focus much of his effort on recruiting fairs.
This week the new officers begin a 10-week field training program, during which they’ll beat the streets with more experienced officers who will teach them everything from patrol routes around Columbus to CPD policies and procedures.
“We’re going to assess how they handle calls, how they talk to people (and) how they handle procedures,” Lewis said.
Konior said she’s excited to be working with the other new officers, all of whom became extremely close at the academy and whom she says will have each other’s backs on the job.
“No matter what goes down, they’ll be there to support me and I’ll be there to support them,” she said.
Her fellow recruit, West Point native Aaron Conley, is also excited to join CPD. He previously worked part-time with the department, an experience he said made him want to complete the academy training and become a full-fledged officer.
“I decided law enforcement is something I wanted to do full-time,” he said.
Training at the academy not only challenged him mentally and physically but it taught him more about the different roles officers play, he said. Officers don’t just handle crimes — they do everything from perform CPR and the same other medical necessities as first responders to simply being a person a member of the community knows they can trust and talk to, he said.
“Not only do we protect people, we’re there for them,” he said.
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