By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Citizens Law Enforcement Academy gives St. Joseph residents the chance to learn about the day-to-day operations of the city’s law enforcement.
Interim Police Chief Dave Hart says the academy gives residents the chance to interact one on one with law enforcement officials.
"To many times when you interact with the police, you're not having your best day, so this gives us a positive opportunity where we can sit down and talk to people, and they can get to know the people who are serving this community " Hart tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr. "Because that's what we want, we want that relationship and those positive interactions when we can get them with our community members, because we're part of this community."
The Citizens Law Enforcement Academy is put on each year by the St. Joseph Police Department and the Buchanan County Sheriff’s Department.
Hart says anyone that's interested in law enforcement or has any questions about it should come to the academy
"That opportunity to come in and be a part of it, so really it's open to anyone adult age is welcome to come down, go through the program, and we haven't gotten any negative feedback on it, so I think you'll have a really good time," Hart says. "You'll learn a lot and we learn too, that's the takeaway for us."
Interested residents 18 and older can register for the Citizens Law Enforcement Academy at the Law Enforcement Center in downtown St. Joseph
Hart says the structure of the academy changes year to year to the time that its being presented
"While the basic fundamentals of policing never change, so much across the landscape of criminal justice has changed, especially in the last 10 to 15 years," Hart explains. "So, we adapt our program to what is current and what we're seeing, and we adapt it to the feedback that we get from our community when they identify well here's what we believe is a problem."
The Citizens Law Enforcement Academy runs from April 4th to May 30th. It runs from 6 to about 9:30pm each day.