Story by Kamryn Collins/COMM 2311-601
From the street to the classroom
“I love it.” That’s how SPC’s newest criminal justice instructor describes the job so far.
Shawn Wilson started teaching criminal justice here full time this semester.
“So, I started last year teaching as an adjunct professor,” he says, “then one of the guys left mid semester of the fall semester last year.”
Wilson calls this job his “second career.” He started teaching at SPC after retiring from the City of Levelland as a municipal court judge. But that’s not where he’s spent most of his time on the job.
It was just three years ago, when news outlets reported Wilson, then a sergeant with the Levelland Police Department, was going home from the hospital after being shot in the head in a SWAT standoff. That same standoff left Lubbock County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Josh Bartlett dead from a gunshot wound to the neck.
Now, Wilson teaches Intro to Criminal Justice, Criminal Investigation, and Police Systems and Practices at the SPC Lubbock Downtown Center.
He does not shy away from talking about having been injured in the line of duty. “Obviously,” he says, “God gave me grace that day.”
“It’s been a long journey,” he says, “but, you know, I’m just incredibly grateful is the best way I can describe it.”
Grateful, he says, for receiving huge amounts of support.
“I was very touched by the amount of support that we received from the community,” he says. “The amount of law enforcement officers that came from all over the state to reach out to me. That meant a lot too.”
Wilson says his whole medical team, including rehabilitation counselors, were fantastic.
“I was paralyzed initially,” he says. “I couldn’t move my legs for probably the first week or so. But I regained it. And to this day I can’t feel my left leg from the knee down for the most part. But the rehab center taught me how to walk without….you can’t even notice it for the most part.”
Physical rehabilitation isn’t the only kind of healing Wilson had to do.
“You have to deal with the aspect of another officer lost his life that same day right next to me,” he says. “Dealing with the guilt of that. Why did I live and he didn’t live?”
Throughout his years in law enforcement, Wilson says there’s not much he hasn’t done. He brings those years of experience wearing a badge to the classroom.
“Whenever I’m teaching,” he says, “I’m trying to give them every experience that I’ve dealt with.”
He says he has a lot of experience in sexual assault investigations, family violence investigations, and the vast majority of his career was spent working narcotics investigations.
“Like I tell my students,” he says, “I don’t want them going into this job not knowing what it really is. And I tell them the good and I tell them the bad.”
While his introductory course at SPC won’t have a lot of hands-on activity this semester, he says his other classes will.
“I’m going to be teaching them how to, you know, what is an informant,” he says. “Teaching them how to, you know, what actually goes into signing up an informant, how do you manage an informant. Also, part of the biggest part of the law enforcement career is going to be spent doing surveillance.”
Wilson points out that criminal investigation has a wide range of tasks that someone can do. He encourages his students to also take courses in journalism and photography.
“It’s only going to help them out if they’re actually interested in becoming a detective,” he says.
From what he describes, his students appear to be engaged.
“They ask a lot of questions,” he says. “They seem like they’re pretty enthusiastic about it.”
Student Eric Corona, who’s enrolled in Wilson’s Police Systems and Practices class, says he wants to go into law enforcement and eventually get to the D.E.A.
He says Wilson is detailed and this class is a great opportunity to learn from him which will make him a better officer.
“I think it’s really informative,” he says. “It’s not just a class but it’s led by an instructor who cares about his students.”
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