Seaford Police Department hosts Junior Police Academy

Simulations and serious situations, at the Seaford Junior Police Academy, these officers are showing them how to react and de-escalate.

Master Corporal John Wingate, who is also an SRO Officer for the city of Seaford, said these students are learning what officers are faced with on a daily basis, and how fast they have to make life-changing decisions. “We don’t know what’s happening on these calls we have to do a lot of assessing… It could be a lot of different things that we have to check out, and we just want the students to get a taste of that, so they know that, not everybody is like, oh we have to shoot somebody, it’s we don’t have to, we can talk them down.”

14-year-old Nicholas Waldridge was in attendance, and his brother is also in law enforcement. “He said the simulation has been the best part of his academy experience, and initially, he didn’t know what to expect. “It was really interesting to see like a scenarios people have to see on a daily. What I think is that you need to keep calm and try to talk to them.”

Gavin Payton is only 12 but is already clear about his future career as an officer. He says this camp is good practice and that he was excited to see the simulation. “The camp is really just about how police officers can. do things and how you can help with it… I haven’t been on it yet, but I want to learn how to talk to somebody. and I learned how to pull someone over and I like that part the most.”

Officers say last year they did this with high schoolers, and this was the first time with middle school-aged children. Wingate said students were required to submit a 200-word essay before acceptance and they take this very seriously. Friday will end the week with a junior cadet graduation.