“Seti, I’ll address you and Catori here on the call, so all parties who may be questioned have the same information,” Sheriff Helki answers. “For Catori, with the reorganization and expansion of the Psycept Police Division, I need a third sergeant. Catori was a detective with the Hohokam police region for eight years and passed her sergeant exam a year ago. There just hasn’t been a sergeant position available in SWACon. I could’ve promoted a Psycept detective to sergeant, but only one has taken the exam and that was just a month ago. Catori has seniority and I didn’t feel that I could pass her by yet again, just because her Psycept experience is minimal. Your case is even more stark, Seti. Neither Tamez nor Randolph have been sergeants long enough to qualify for lieutenant and there is no path for a detective to become a lieutenant and skip being a sergeant. You’ve been a lieutenant of a small department in Mesa Verde for over a year and were a sergeant for five years before that. In addition, you were one of the detectives from Chaco region that came to help Sheriff Lowell at the first arrival of the Psycepts, before a Psycept unit was even created. So, you have unique Psycept experience.”
Now that’s interesting. I had one brief interaction with Helki and Setimika when I first arrived. Helki was an officer who recently passed his detective’s exam. He was waiting for detective training and region reassignment so decided to come and help the then Sheriff Lowell in the meantime. However, it seems Setimika was already a detective. I next met Helki seven years later when he arrived as the new Sheriff of Bosque. Sheriff is the title, but the position is sub-chief of police and Helki is over police in the entire Bosque region of Southwestern Alliance Conservatorship, or SWACon. I wonder how Helki took over for Lowell as sheriff eight years ago while Setimika is a newer lieutenant. My limited knowledge tells me that Setimika is the norm while Sheriff Helki had a meteoric rise through the ranks.
“So that leaves me with the recruit selection question,” Chief Yanaba says. “The new detectives come from me. I, like Sheriff Helki, decided to no longer prioritize Psycept officers for promotions within the division. When the Psycept unit was first created, it was staffed by officers from Albuquerque. This is standard, officers stay in the region they originate from while detectives are reassigned from other regions. My predecessor decided to make an exception and promote Psycept officers to Psycept detectives as we needed to quickly ramp up the unit and the Psycept police learning curve is steep. After the initial three years of chaos, the tradition of promoting within the unit was in place. Now, I see this as a perfect opportunity to put the Psycept Police Division back in line with the rest of the conservatorship. I have a backlog of officers that have passed their detective exams and are waiting for positions to open. I have fifteen new detective positions opening here. Should I promote only Psycept officers as they have Psycept experience? No, I should not. Psycept cases can be taught, just like homicide or assault or robbery. So, I promoted the new detectives from the other three regions, which is aligning the Division back to the standard practice. Any current Psycept officers that have passed the detective or sergeant exam have been added to the pool for the next available position in one of the other three regions. The new officers were selected from police academy applicants from Bosque and all officers need to know that becoming a Psycept officer is no longer a fast track to a detective.”
That internal friction is more than I need to know, and I take it as a sign for me to conclude the conference. “Thank you both for the explanations and I am sure this knowledge will come in handy to those that are asked questions regarding this. To summarize, Chief Yanaba has authorized fifteen new detectives and forty-five new officers to be added to the Psycept Police Division. New officers were selected from the Bosque candidate pool by the Division leaders and are currently undergoing police academy training at Wir-Kiva. The detectives were promoted from other regions and are wrapping up any current cases and preparing to move to Albuquerque. In three weeks, all new personnel will undergo additional Psycept specific training which will be held in Wir-Kiva going forward.
“But for now, everything is set for the first group, to go through the revamped Psycept Police training beginning Monday. The current Psycept police have been assigned to their new country-of-origin units and will undergo retraining here in Albuquerque over the next three weeks.
“It was nice working with everyone, great teamwork. We’ll meet this Thursday to discuss the first week, then again when we have our formal project review and analysis discussion in one month. If you need anything from me beforehand, please contact me. Thank you.” And finally, the conference, and the project itself, ends. All I have left is the review and analysis, but that is a headache for future me.
CHAPTER TWO
I have enough time before the next call to let Echo outside to stretch his legs in the dog run. At five months, he’s midway up my thigh and a solid thirty pounds. He has a couple more inches to grow and about
