Adults can learn police work at Robbinsville citizen academy

🚨Robbinsville's adult Police Academy gives an unprecedented experience

🚨Graduates become defacto members of the police department

🚨The deadline to apply is Aug. 28

ROBBINSVILLE — It's an adult version of a program that is normally associated with kids but gives a grown-up experience of being a police officer.

Robbinsville police are accepting applicants for its second Adult Citizen Police Academy, a program designed to give participants an unprecedented look at how the department operates through classroom instruction, interactive presentations, and a patrol ride-along. While they get the matching shirts of their junior counterparts, the program for adults is very different in tone and structure without the physical fitness aspect.

"The main purpose is getting people from in our town, from all different developments throughout the town, to understand what we are doing in detail. Every week has a different subject, has different divisions that we deal with, and it exposes our officers," Lt. Scott Kivet said.

Members of the first class put their experience to work and became advocates for the department to their own circle of neighbors.

"There's so much material in these seven weeks of topics. They meet every officer and understand everything, what you want, in full transparency, how we deal with it," Kivet said.

Lt. Tom Egan said that each of the seven classes that meet in the fall has a dedicated topic. Officers with specialized training on the subject from Robbinsville and throughout the county come in to talk about what they do.

"We start with some DWI and narcotics training. What we do is we show them how to identify drugs paraphernalia associated with drugs. We teach them about standardized field sobriety tests. We have these fatal vision goggles that simulate if you're impaired," Egan said. "We let them put them on and we run them through field sobriety tests so they understand how serious that is and how dangerous it is to get behind the wheel when you're intoxicated."

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Learning new methods of policing

They also spend time with the K-9 unit, learn about how the department would respond to an active shooter, and get to use a firearms training simulator that puts the user in a "shoot or don't shoot" circumstance.

"We want everyone that's in this academy to see that, because that's the type of things that we see on a daily basis, and it's usually a very big eye opener when people are run through the scenarios on that and they see how complex our job is," Egan said.

Academy students also learn that policing has changed dramatically and how officers do their jobs has changed dramatically They help bring that message to the community.

"The biggest thing I tell them is how we did policing 10 years ago is obsolete. Now it's a total different style of policing and they need to understand and be educated on how we do it. And literally, what they're doing is helping us help help them in the community because they're pretty much advocates for us," Egan said.

The class is almost life-changing for the participants. Kivet said they become de facto members of the department and help out with events, including the National Night Out. They have become close friends and get together for dinner with each other and the officers.

The deadline to apply for the second class is Aug. 28. Applications can be found on the Robbinsville police website.

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