Police cadets debunk two myths about the education – one myth contains a degree of truth.

Casper and Marcus have sat down in front of the screen to evaluate DR’s new drama series about the police.

Casper on the left and Marcus on the right are both in their final semester of the police officer training program. (© Police Academy)

The fictional police academy in DR’s new drama series *Uniformen*, which premiered on DR1 today, is a tough place for students. In the series, instructors yell at students and give them nicknames on the very first day of school. The hierarchy is clear, and the students are at the bottom of the pecking order.

While the real-life Police Academy has contributed to the series by sharing insights and showing around the school, *Uniformen* is entirely fictional.

As viewers, it’s hard not to wonder how realistic the portrayal of life at the Police Academy is.

We showed the two police students—Marcus, 25, and Casper, 26—three clips from the first episode and asked if they recognized the scenarios from their own daily lives at the academy. Both are in their final semester of the program.

The two classmates appear in the article without last names for the sake of their future security.

In the first clip, an instructor in the subject of force application is confronted for his harsh tone toward the students. The principal reads a complaint aloud against him, accusing him of calling a female student "Dolly Parton."

The same instructor then nicknames a new student "Pik-å" while standing close to them and says: *"When I speak, you stay quiet. Got it?"*

Is this reality or fiction—that instructors talk to students this way?

- *"Fiction!"* both young men say in unison.

- *"We experience that people are spoken to in a proper and pedagogical manner,"* says Marcus.

So, the stereotypical idea of a harsh tone from the police—can you relate to that from the real academy?

- *"Not from what we’ve experienced,"* Marcus replies. *"And I’ve never heard anything like that in the hallways,"* he adds.

In *Uniformen*, the students live on campus. They have their own rooms, and we see them in a shared kitchen.

But that doesn’t match reality.

- *"That’s pure fiction,"* says Marcus, comparing the Police Academy to a workplace and many other educational institutions where you show up in the morning and leave when classes are over.

Casper guesses that the idea comes from some citizens imagining that the police operate like the military, where, for example, conscripts can live on base during their service.

- *"We just have a locker each for our stuff,"* he explains.

In the third and final clip we showed the police students, the abrasive instructor in force application is fired. He defends his statements by saying: *"People, citizens, they fucking hate us. No one gives a shit about what we have to say unless we put them in their place."*

The overall portrayal of police training in the series is false, but Casper adds:

- *"In a way, we are trained to be tough through scenario-based exercises in power instruction so we can handle all the problems we might face on the streets."*

- *"In the role-playing exercises, we learn how to deal with situations where we’re spoken to harshly, and how to handle it by letting it bounce off us,"* he says.

You can watch the first episode of the series today on DRTV.

Warning: This article was translated by a Large Language Model, in case of doubt, you can always visit the original source.