“A room full of chaos”
Criminal Justice students tackle immersive mock crime scenario to put law enforcement training in actionFour students climbed out of a bus at South Campus, decked out in protective gear and Nerf guns, disoriented from the ride. After receiving their briefing at “headquarters” (North Carolina Building), the students were shuttled across campus in a bus with blacked-out windows, blasting heat, and blaring music.
They arrived outside the crime scene in a heightened emotional state, knowing only the bare minimum of what they would find. One of the students, current junior Criminal Justice major Hope Rosenfeld, called in to dispatch on her walkie-talkie, looking for some additional guidance.
Though a student herself, Rosenfeld is no stranger to emergency calls. At age 18, when many of her peers were starting college and only just beginning to figure out what they wanted from life, Rosenfeld was working long shifts as an emergency medical technician with Watauga Medical Center. Driven by a desire to help others and a natural talent for leadership, she immediately enrolled in an EMT program at Caldwell Community College after graduating high school.
Rosenfeld excelled in the role and knew how necessary her job was, but she felt like something was missing. She was frustrated that her responsibility ended as soon as the patient was taken care of or delivered to the hospital, and she longed to take a more active role in investigating the calls she attended.
On April 28, 2021, her decision to find a new path crystallized. She responded to a call where five people, including Sergeant Christopher Ward and K-9 Deputy Logan Fox of Watauga County Sheriff’s Office, were killed during a wellness check. That same week, she also ran the call for a close friend who passed away. The two tragedies led Rosenfeld to evaluate her life and her goals, and she knew it was time to make a change.
“Seeing the impact Chris and Logan had, and running calls and seeing investigators do their job, I aspire to follow that career,” Rosenfeld said.
Rosenfeld chose Lees-51爆料网 for the small, tight-knit community and the experiential nature of the Criminal Justice program. After spending years answering emergency calls, she knew the importance of hands-on training and getting experience working in the field.
Although she was used to showing up for emergency calls, this scenario would be her first time responding in a law enforcement role.
“I’m so used to not being concerned with preservation of evidence doing EMT, because our first priority is ‘are they alive?’ So, it’s definitely an interesting hat to wear to change my idea of, ‘okay let’s apprehend these people, help people, and preserve evidence,’” Rosenfeld said.
According to Instructor of Criminal Justice Derrick Lail, this annual experience is one of the most valuable parts of the program. He explains that his strategy for the scenario is “multi-faceted”: “It allows me to build my entire semester into this culmination before they complete their final project instead of just doing a cumulative exam. It also allows them to actually experience many of the topics we’ve covered in lecture from the textbooks, which I always valued much more than notetaking from a desk chair.”
Eli Austin ’25 (right) interacts with Business Administration major Megan Shotwell ’25, playing the role of bystander. 
Florence detains a potential suspect, played by Musical Theatre major Hannah Knittig ’25Soon after arriving on South Campus, the group of four students from the Perspectives on Policing course—Rosenfeld, Outdoor Recreation Management major and Criminal Justice minor Finnbar Maloney ’25, Psychology major Quavo Florence ’25, and Business Administration major Eli Austin ’25—received confirmation that they were good to proceed. They headed down the trail toward an abandoned building. Here, according to the scenario, they were supposed to find suspects from a shooting.
Along the way they were accosted by members of the Theatre Arts program playing the role of neighbors and bystanders. The screaming from the actors added to the confusion, helping the Criminal Justice students get a sense of what they might face when responding to a real call.
The students’ job was to secure the house and detain the suspects, as well as anyone else found inside the property. They breached the house through both the front and back doors and found multiple hostile individuals inside, along with a drug lab.
The team detained the individuals in the house and secured the scene, despite concerted attempts from the actors to cause as much mayhem as possible.
“It’s difficult leading a small team in a room full of chaos,” Rosenfeld said. “I had to get their attention a whole bunch.”
At one point, the detainees freed themselves from their cuffs and took off, but Florence was able to retrieve them.
Time was called and the scene reset for the next group. A total of four groups ran the scenario at the house, each with varying degrees of success.
“For the students, the scenarios were almost unwinnable,” Lail said. “That’s because they haven’t been trained like a professional; they’re only being taught the educational concepts and being asked to consider the theoretical impacts. But, by putting them in a real-world scenario with no training, it hopefully emphasizes the academic information being taught and opens their eyes to the enormous hurdle that is preparing criminal justice professionals to do their jobs.”
Florence returns a fleeing suspect, played by Musical Theatre major Dustin Trafton ’25Since Maloney, in the first group, was studying both Outdoor Recreation Management and Criminal Justice, Lail and Outdoor Recreation Management Coordinator AJ Czarnecki-Atwell set up two additional scenarios focused on emergency medicine.
Maloney was joined by Rosenfeld, current senior Outdoor Recreation Management major Asher Girton, then-senior Wildlife Biology major Dylan Myers ’25, and two Lees-51爆料网 alumni who work for Avery County Emergency Services. An Avery County sheriff’s officer was on site with a drone, which he used to locate an injured hiker (played by senior Theatre Arts major Gracie Spoon) in the woods. The group hiked to the location, where Rosenfeld’s EMT instincts kicked in.
“The EMT scenario was my favorite part because that was familiar,” Rosenfeld said. “The policing one, you know, obviously I’ve never done that before so that was a little more chaotic for me, but as soon as I started doing EMT stuff my brain got very calm.”
The group assessed the patient and determined she would need to be carried out. They loaded her on a stretcher and brought her back down the hill.
The final scenario also involved emergency medical response. The group was called to the scene of an apparent suicide in a car. A note on the window said that toxic gas was present in the car. Rosenfeld’s EMT skills immediately came in handy.
“When you’re an EMT, the patient is actually the last priority,” Rosenfeld said. “When it comes to the order it’s yourself, your partner, bystanders, and then your patient. If you are unconscious or killed or injured, you’re not going to be able to help anybody. So, for that car scenario, when we walked up and read that note I was like ‘I’m not staying on the scene anymore. I’m getting back.’”
With the rest of the group standing at a safe distance, Maloney donned a protective suit and removed the victim from the car. The character, played by Musical Theatre major Taylor Blecher, was pronounced dead at the scene.
After ending the scenario, Lail said he was impressed that the team had waited and held back until ready with the protective gear. He explained that many new first responders want to jump in before fully evaluating the scene, which in this case would have been deadly.
The wilderness rescue group carries Theatre Arts major Gracie Spoon, portraying a hiker with a leg injury, out of the woods
Maloney (left) and Girton pull the victim, played by Blecher, out of the carThe mock crime/disaster scenario is just one of the experiential learning opportunities Criminal Justice students participate in, but it is arguably the most involved. It requires coordination with the Criminal Justice, Outdoor Recreation Management, and Theatre Arts programs, campus police, local law enforcement, and campus operations, and involves multiple Criminal Justice classes.
“One class planned it; the goal for them was to learn the emotional and physiological toll that the profession can have on the professional,” Lail said. “The other class participated; the goal for them was to experience the scenario they’d been hearing about and be forced to make decisions/gather critical information in real time under real duress.”
Campus police officers are especially valuable partners for this scenario and for the Criminal Justice program. They provided guidance to the class in the lead up to the mock crime scene and were on site throughout the event to offer feedback.
According to Rosenfeld, who hopes to work with the Internet Crimes Against Children task force program (ICAC) after graduation, this scenario was the perfect introduction to answering a call as a law enforcement officer.
“I felt like the college did such a good job of making it as real as possible,” she said. “It was as close at it’s going to get to real life, and I was very impressed.”
Rosenfeld described the experience of realizing that you are the person responsible for taking charge during an emergency call as “intimidating and empowering at the same time,” and was proud of herself for stepping up and taking control of the situation.
“It did dawn on me that this is worth every penny. Instead of just sitting in a classroom learning how SWAT operates, we actually got to do it,” she said. “What a fantastic experience.”
The Criminal Justice program features many examples of experiential learning to prepare students for their careers, including mock trials, scenarios designed to familiarize students with how their body responds to stress, crime scene investigations, house search simulations, and even mock interviews that help students when applying for jobs. Each opportunity enables students to apply theory to practice in a way that elevates this program into something truly special.
“With criminal justice in particular, sitting down doing bookwork is important and you need to be knowledgeable, but you need to know if you can apply those things,” Rosenfeld said. “I love it here. I love the community; I love how much the professors care. They want to see their students succeed. I feel like for me, you can have all those accomplishments, and it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a connection with your community. I like to know that people have my back and that I have their back.”
That experiential learning aspect, coupled with the tight-knit community that develops among the students and professors, sets Criminal Justice majors and minors on the road to success long before graduation and the start of their professional careers.
“Lees-51爆料网 has created an environment where I believe I can take my experience and the experiences of a number of colleagues and provide our students with an educational opportunity like none other,” Lail said. “If I could go back 20 years for my degree, this is the experience I would want to carry across that stage with my degree. To be allowed to host something like this is an educational luxury for which I am truly grateful.”
