The Harford County Sheriff’s Office offers an opportunity to join a youth academy program during the summer to all Harford County high schoolers.
This gives high school students the chance to learn about what it is like to be a part of many different branches of law enforcement including sheriff, S.W.A.T, forensics, and more. Participants spend five days and four nights at the Harford Glen Environment Education center with no cost.
Anyone involved gets to experience classroom instruction and hands-on activities, learning and enforcing sheriff responsibilities, as well as traditional summer camp activities and team bonding exercises.
Students that are interested in signing up are able to contact their school resource officer (SRO) in order to apply, and find out more information about the course.
Here at NH, there were a few students who did attend the program over the summer, one of which was senior Luke Brown.
Brown attended the program during July 31-Aug. 4. “It was a lot of fun, and I recommend it to everyone. My favorite part would probably have been when we got to re-enact scenarios because you get to clear buildings and work with people in order to handle traffic stops,” he stated.
The senior liked how educational the program was. “We learned about traffic stops, forensics, how to hold and manipulate a weapon the correct way, along with how to handle and attempt to de-escalate a situation in the case of domestic violence.” He continues, “we also learned about the drugs on the street, how they affect you, and how much money you can make from selling them as well as the time in jail you could do for that. The last thing I remember we learned about was being undercover.”
Brown believes that he would like to work in the field of law enforcement when he gets older. However, he would like to join the marine corps first. He had a general idea of what he wanted to do before the program, but he states, “this really solidified my decision, and I am definitely planning on joining after the corps.”
