Police Academy cadets continue their training

MARQUETTE — We’ve been following the intense training of police cadets as they make their way through the NMU Regional Police academy over the weeks and the recruits are still going strong.

Friday the cadets learned about proper search techniques. When conducting a search, there’s more to the process than meets the eye.

“There are exceptions to the search warrant rule. Generally speaking, to search something you need a search warrant, but there are exceptions to that rule, like I said, such as open view or plain view, a probably cause, a search incident to an arrest and several others that are exceptions such as emergency or hot pursuit,” said Detective Gregory Kinonen of the Marquette Police Department.

While conducting a search is an important practical skill, it also shows a lot about the character of police officers.

“Having just a good head on their shoulders [and] good decision making skills is one of the main things in police work. It’s being able to make a decision on the fly and being able to think things through quickly and make those decisions quickly and accurately,” added Kinonen.

“Definitely our mindset, like we always have to be on the watch for anything that’s going on. I go into a restaurant and I sit in the back so I can look at the doorway and I’m just way more observant about everything that’s going on around us. They dug that into us, attention to detail, right away in the very beginning,” said Helann Ruhf, one of the cadets.

The program is sixteen weeks long and includes eight hundred hours of police training.