News photo by Grace Walker Students with the Northern Michigan Career Academy learn how to do serpentine exercises in Michigan State Police cars at Alpena Community College on Wednesday.

ALPENA– Students with the Northern Michigan Career Academy have been getting hands-on experience with the Michigan State Police this week at Alpena Community College.

The Northern Michigan Law Enforcement Career Academy is a program in partnership between the Michigan State Police and Alpena Community College to give prospective police officers a glimpse of what it’s like to train through a police academy. This year, the program started on July 19 and today.

This is the third year of the Northern Michigan Career Academy and the Alpena Community College is one of five colleges that are partnering with the Michigan State Police for career academies this summer. Others include Gogebic Community College, Madonna University, Northwood University, and Monroe County Community College.

This week, 14 students, between the ages of 16 to 21 years old, who are being trained on crime scene investigation, defensive tactics, and more, Michigan State Police Officer Jason Kunath said. Students from across the state have joined the program, he said, including one from Marquette and a few from southern Michigan.

“It’s been a successful program to expose these kids to law enforcement and then get them into law enforcement,” Officer Kunath said. “The longer you’re in this career path, the more connections you make.”

On Wednesday, students were being trained on defensive driving skills. Kunath said much of the training is to get students exposed to safe maneuvers of a car in case of emergency situations.

“They come out of this with some real-life skills,” he said. “This is not something that gets taught in a regular driver’s ed course.”

The main exercise was on serpentines. Students were divided between three police cars and learned how to weave in and out of a line of traffic cones at high speeds. Kunath said this is an exercise most would see in a regular police academy.

“What this shows them is you can, at certain speeds, maneuver around an object faster than you could stop before hitting it,” he said.

The students are also trained on ways police should interact with the public.

“Over the course of the week, we are starting to introduce the students to the discipline that we call defensive tactics,” Michigan State Officer Ryan Erxleben said. “And in defensive tactics, we are talking about basic interactions that we have with the public throughout the course of our day.”

Erxleben is one of the officers teaching the programs. He said students learn how to stand, and hold their hands, how to use handcuffs and how to stay professional and empathetic while interacting with the public.

“Watching them (students) take something that they struggled with on day one and then move it to day two and see it improve across the board, it’s very rewarding,” Erxleben said.