Career Center Considers Criminal Justice Collaborations
There is a two-year gap between high school graduation and the eligible age for entering the police academy, and local educators continue to look for ways to bridge it, especially in light of an overall decreased interest in the profession.
There is a two-year gap between high school graduation and the eligible age for entering the police academy, and local educators continue to look for ways to bridge it, especially in light of an overall decreased interest in the profession.
Stephen Roberts, the criminal justice instructor at Auburn Career Center, agreed with the assertion that fewer people are going into police academies.
“I think one of the main reasons is the state of the country,” said Roberts, who has a history as a state parole officer and federal probation officer. “There is a blatant, blatant disrespect for law enforcement in this country and what officers have to deal with now through court cases and court decisions, the rules have kind of changed.”
At ACC, Roberts has seen high enrollment with his juniors, while the numbers among the seniors tend to dip a bit as some students realize they want to do something else.
“A lot of the students that come in, they’re interested in the crime scene class, doing crime scenes, processing and whatnot,” Roberts said.
He believes some of that interest may stem from TV shows that glamorize the work.
“The ones that leave, usually they realize, ‘I don’t want to do this’ for whatever reason,” he said.
Some students lose interest after touring the jail and seeing the reality of the job, or seeing what dispatch work entails, he said.
In his curriculum, Roberts stresses his students learn the ability to talk to people and deal with a variety of situations.
“You really don’t know what you’re getting yourself into every time you get a call or every time you’re pulling a traffic stop,” he said. “You might have a mental health patient, you might have a drug user, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, so I do my best to get them prepared for the different types of situations they may encounter.”
When students graduate at 18 with a diploma, they can get into the corrections field by becoming a corrections officer or a dispatcher, Roberts said.
Currently, students graduating from criminal justice go into the military, go into corrections or go into the workforce without entering the field, Roberts said.
“Locally, there are openings. If they chose to do that, they can probably get in at either Geauga or Lake County sheriff’s (offices). The state prison system is hiring a lot. You can always go into security,” he said, adding there is potential to be hired right out of high school.
Students who want to get into law enforcement have to go through the police academy, he said.
Roberts recalled when he was first hired as a probation officer, there were 214 applicants for four openings.
By the end of his time, there might be 20 applicants for four openings and of those 20, half might not be qualified and the other half may not be a good fit, resulting in all four slots not being filled, he said.
When asked about incentives departments now offer new hires, Roberts said some departments pay for a recruit’s certifications or start new officers on high salaries.
While the criminal justice program at ACC continues to tackle enrollment challenges, the center’s firefighting program has been holding strong, Superintendent Joe Glavan said, adding they are trying to find a way to provide that same level of support and excitement for police.
“The biggest gap we have with police that’s different from fire is with police, you gotta be 21 to go to the police academy,” he said. “But how do we collectively create a pathway that we’re not losing these students? We’re getting interest when they’re in high school and then there’s this almost like a two-year stop-gap. What do we do with that to then have them move on to the police academy but also continue on after that?”
Administrators have been throwing around the idea of creating a hub for the subject, Glavan said, adding high school criminal justice programs could segue into an associate’s degree in criminal justice program at a local community college and then those students could go into the police academy.
“All the things I just mentioned are within like a five-mile radius of us. But it’s just, we’re not collaborating together right now,” Glavan said.
Roberts is in favor of the idea.
“That two-year gap is huge, especially coming out of the high school program where you really have two options,” he said. “I think that because the opportunities are limited for the criminal justice high school students, you tend to lose some of them.”
Glavan had recently met with law enforcement officials from Lake County to discuss that gap, he said.
“The only way we’re going to find solutions to these is if we just start talking with each other,” he said, adding the more that can be done internally at places like ACC, the more local departments are supported and the better off everyone is.
It would also be good to expand different modes of delivery, Glavan said, using a semester-long exploration course as an example of a possibility.
“It’s on us, it’s on myself and the educators. We have to do a better job in those ninth- and 10th-grade years — and I would even push down to eighth-grade year — of how (we do) career connections and career exploration,” Glavan said. “So that way, when kids are applying their 10th-grade year for programs, they’re able to make a more educated … decision.”
It is just as valuable for a kid to realize they absolutely do not want to go into criminal justice after a semester, he added.
“These aren’t jobs, these are careers that people are going to be able to live in their communities, raise their families and serve their communities,” Glavan said. “This is what we should be doing and we are good at it.”
