ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) – There’s a huge need for criminal justice professionals across our hometowns.

One community college is offering programs to foster grow the next generation of professionals in police, courts or corrections.

“These are vital roles in our community, so we want to make sure that they have the skills that they need to be able to go out into those roles in the community,” said Jeff Dodson, Program Head.

In the Criminal Justice Program at Virginia Western Community College, they emphasize three important things.

“Professionalism, accountability, and integrity,” said Dodson.

He said to do that they have developed a program which encompasses all aspects of criminal justice.

“So criminal justice is so much deeper than just the police. You know, you can get into probation and parole. You can get into corrections. You can get into certain types of counseling, forensic science,” said Dodson.

For most students, it’s a passion and a need to want to make the community where they live in a better place.

“Everything that we do is basically around the community policing aspect of it. And so I really like to get the community engagement part of the criminal justice program,” said Aiden Likens, student.

“In that class, like it was just night and day because I was in that class and I was also a community engagement officer. I was able to just take like what I was learning and then like do it in the field each day and just treat people with respect and make them feel like we really truly care,” said Kala Gilbert, student.

The program offers hand on experience through the crime lab and partners with law enforcement in our hometowns to help them learn what it’s like on the job.

“We give instructions from basic law to search and seizure techniques to, like, the practical application of being in a career in law enforcement….I’ll be able to bridge the gap between understanding what the job is and then talking about the job, but make sure we facilitate a comfortable environment for future employment,” said Officer Nicholas Comas, police recruiter for Roanoke Police.

As well as internships.

“You don’t really know how to be a cop and what really goes into the day-to-day work until you actually see it firsthand,” said Brian Lee, police recruiter for Roanoke County Police.

“Offering internships for us allow us to help develop the next generation of law enforcement professionals,” said Sean Slusser, Captain for Salem Police.

If you would like to learn more about the program, click here.

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