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Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Junior Police Academy celebrates first graduating class
By KATELYN CORDERO
[email protected]
On Friday the Youth Police Initiative
Junior Police Academy congratulated its
first graduating class. The program is a
follow up of the Youth Police Initiative,
the next step taking the cadets closer to
their goals of becoming members of law
enforcement.
All the graduating cadets will
participate in the Cadet Program this
September, where they will meet two to
three times a week on their own and once
a week mandatorily to prepare for the
academic and physical pressure of the
police academy.
The program is funded by the New
York State Division of Justice Services
and with local contributors. The police
department sends out the information
to the YPI initiative and the local high
schools for cadets to get involved. The
group had 14 participate in the academy
but only 10 made it to the graduation.
All of the cadets between the ages of
12 to 18 were expected to complete all
the physical and mental tests necessary
to become an officer. They were trained
by officers in the department who
volunteered to work with the cadets.
“It’s a two way street. The cadets are
learning about the officers, and the
officers are impacted in incredible ways
by these cadets,” said Lieutenant Joseph
Cortez.
Thanks to donations from Alfi’s
Uniforms, each of the cadets will be fitted
with their own uniform for the following
program. The cadets will stay in the
program until they are ready to go into
the police academy.
“In the police academy it’s chaos, you
don’t know what is going to happen,” said
Officer Daniella Portillo. “You have to
adjust, look over your shoulder and help
each other out. That is what these cadets
did. Seeing them work as a team, I’m
incredibly proud. I just want to see them
succeed.”
Portillo was one of a group of officers
that put in hours of effort to greenlight
the program and trained with the cadets.
Officer Dan Delicio was one of the leading
officers of the project organizing the
program and getting all the paperwork
squared away.
“This program is good community
policing for the police department,” said
Delicio. “We are very excited to have
the support of the community and are
incredibly excited to start the cadet
program..”
Police Chief Doug Solomon came up
with the idea of the program and passed
it on to his staff to get it running. He was
impressed with his staff and the direction
in which they took the program.
Gursham Sigh, 18 a leader in the group
was granted the most well rounded cadet
award. He was asked to speak in front of
the group.
“Make no mistake this is not the end of
our journey this is just the beginning,”
said Singh.
Sigh will attend SUNY Orange in the
fall studying cyber security. He intends to
go into law enforcement with to hopes of
becoming a detective.
Top: Gursham Sigh received the award for
“outstanding overall performance” prior to
giving a speech to the crowd.
Left: Each of the cadets signed a shirt to be
presented to Chief Doug Solomon.