Ryan Foster always knew he wanted to be a police offer, but he wasn’t sure he was going to be a police officer in Ledyard.

Ever since he was a kid, he watched TV shows about police officers, and by sophomore year at Ledyard High School, he decided he was going to pursue a degree in justice & law administration at Western Connecticut State University.

Foster was also a standout athlete in high school: a receiver and running back on the football team and “one of the state’s fastest lacrosse players” his senior year.

But he wasn’t sure he’d ever return to Ledyard after his mother moved back to upstate New York two years ago.

“Basically I was (in Danbury) for five years. I didn’t really have anything back here until I found out they were hiring,” Foster said of the Ledyard police department. “I came back, and had all my friends here, and it ended up working out.”

However, the path from interview to the Ledyard police department is a long one.

Applicants must pass a test, an oral board examination, an interview with the police chief (in Ledyard’s case, Mayor Rodolico) and then a final meeting with the officers on the force.

“You get hired, sworn in, and start at the police academy for six months,” Foster said. “It’s crazy.”

But after six months of studying and days spent learning the practical skills of policing at the academy in Meriden, he’s back in Ledyard, learning to patrol the familiar streets of his hometown.

The first three months, new officers are paired with a field training officer, who provides guidance and evaluates their work.

Foster’s FTO, Officer Daniel Gagnon, has trained three officers in his career, and says Foster has the “gift of gab” that makes him an effective communicator.

However, there are a number of ways new officers need to acclimate, including developing community policing skills and sorting out facts from fiction to prepare Foster for the first, often difficult week, when officers began their solo shift.

“You are now an attorney, a counselor, a priest sometimes; you have a whole bunch of different hats you have to wear and that’s the hardest part,” Gagnon said.

So far, Foster has been working the 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift; when the department receives more calls as people return home from work or leave the casinos.

One hour into his first shift, Foster and Gagnon arrested a drunk driver, and later on that night arrested another drunk driver with a warrant.

“I’m glad he got it, but it was a rare day. To see that much at the first day and your very first hour is amazing,” Gagnon said.

Other calls so far have included a major accident on the border with Preston and a few calls with no clear resolution, one where Foster spent hours out in the rain looking for someone who was never found.

“You’re not going to have the result at the end of every case, not everything is definitive,” Gagnon said. “With experience you just come to accept you don’t know, you’ll never know.”

But Foster has so far been eager to learn from his FTO.

“It’s fun: basically I’m just grilling him with questions ... it’s a good time,” he said. “I’m looking forward to going back to night. At the end of the night it’s almost like: ‘It’s over already? Let’s go back out.’”

He’s grateful to no longer be wearing the khaki uniform worn by cadets at the academy, and for his fellow officers at the Ledyard Police Department, who he says have been warm and welcoming.

“It’s like having 20 brothers all there at the same time,” Foster said. “Everyone is really close, everyone knows everything about everyone (and) everyone is trying to help each other out,” he said.

n.lynch@theday.com

Twitter: @_nathanlynch