Robbinsdale Teams with Crystal and New Hope for Tri-City Junior Police Academy
This summer, Robbinsdale Police Department will partner with neighboring Crystal and New Hope officers to offer the first-ever Tri-City Junior Police Academy. The three suburbs already partner on many law enforcement programs, including a Citizens Police Academy.
“When it comes to policing, one of the things we do is community engagement-a lot of our work is youth-focused,” said Nneka Onuma, Ph.D., Crystal’s joint community police partnership liaison. “The information they take in that age kind of helps build them up in regards to what they need to do in the future. So it’s possible that a child who participates in the junior police academy could potentially could say ‘hey, this is a profession I could see myself potentially going in to.’”
The junior police academy will be Thursday and Friday, June 13 and 14, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Crystal Community Center and Crystal City Hall. It is for kids in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. There will be demonstrations and presentations from a variety of law enforcement officers from a variety of agencies.
“They’re going to learn about what it is to be a SWAT officer and what that process is like. They get to interact with a K-9,” said Onuma. “So, there’s different things that not only allows the officers who will be a part of this to engage with the youth in the communities that they’re serving, but it also allows the youth to kind of engage and to get a deeper learning of not only the profession but also the actual officers who will be a part of this program.”
Robbinsdale is joining with the other two cities for the first time, and Community Engagement Officer Nichole Saba said it’s a great way for young people to become more familiar with not only the work that police officers do, but also the officers themselves.
“We all know that usually when police get called to a scene or somebody’s house, it’s not always a positive interaction,” said Saba. “This is another way of fostering those partnerships, of showing the youth that this is what police do.”
Saba said the cost is $20 to participate, but there are scholarships available.
