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Chapter on Watertown Police Department

Citizen's Police Academy

Detective Ken Severn teaches Watertown resident Alice Fuchs, a member of the city’s Citizen’s

Police Academy, how to use a firearm during a session at the Watertown Conservation Club.

05 12 2000

Graduation at Watertown Police Department's first-ever Citizen's Police Academy, students of the class are saying they're glad they enrolled.

"I think they did great for the first year," student Alice Fuchs said of academy coordinators. "I love this, and I didn't realize there was this much to policing." Fuchs has been interested in police work since 1967. That year she began helping rehabilitate inmates at state prisons.

The 69-year-old woman learned up-close about police on Saturday at the academy's eight-hour, hands-on instruction session at the Watertown Conservation Club's rifle range.

Eighteen Watertown residents make up the student body of the cost-free, 10-week class. Watertown Crime Prevention Officer Andy Gee and Capt. Tom Killmon are academy coordinators and aim to teach the students about police operations while offering them the opportunity to meet the force.

Class member Shelly Nelson, 26, works with Watertown's Project J.O.I.N. (Juvenile Offenders Involvement Network), which seeks to reintegrate juvenile offenders into the community.

She said the class is significant because citizens in the class have the opportunity to discover that police officers are in their line of work because they care about helping people.

"The most important thing is that this class shows police do the job because they care about people.