VCSF Awards for the Department's Outstanding Candidates

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department awards an outstanding graduate of their academy program based on the recruits overall performance throughout the 22 weeks of the academy program. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Foundation recognizes and supports this award of distinction by presenting the candidate with an engraved Sig Sauer 239.

In Officer Charles Katsapis' case, he had made it to week 13 in a previous class and injured himself on the POST Work Sample Test Battery.  His injury prevented him from continuing, so he returned to the academy in Class 2008-3.  He came back with an outstanding attitude and took leadership of the class right away.  He was a strong leader who cared about each of his classmates.  For this reason, he was selected as the class sergeant.  He performed well in all aspects of the academy while leading his classmates effectively.  Staff was impressed by his attitude, effort, and performance; so we each rated him very high in personal traits.  That was a big factor in causing him to win the outstanding recruit.

In Officer Cody J. Collet's case, he was not the class sergeant. What impressed staff about him was that he was able to be a leader in the class without the title of class sergeant. His peers rated him very high on the peer evaluations, and commented that he was a very influential recruit in the class. He carried himself with confidence and performed well in all areas of the program. In fact, he won the Academic Achievement and Outstanding Scenario Performance awards also. Staff recognized the extra effort Collet gave to his classmates by giving him high scores for the personal traits award. That factored in with all the other high scores won him the Outstanding Recruit award.