Whitney Downard / The Meridian StarAttorney Stephen Wilson covers the legal aspect of police work with students in the Citizen Police Training Academy. 

A drug court case manager from Maine, a peer support specialist with Weems Community Mental Health Center, a financial analyst, a personal trainer, an insurance agent and retirees sat together in a classroom in the Meridian Community College Workforce Center – pens in hand, furiously scribbling down notes.

“There’s just so much I don’t know,” Angela Turner, a drug court manager under Judge Veldore Young, said. “I need to read up on all of this.”

Interested in attending?

If you’d like to take the class in the future, call Mike Vick, with the Meridian Police Department, at (601) 484-6830 and, if no one answers, leave a voicemail.

The class costs $100, but scholarships are available.

The class consists of 10 four-hour classes. Students will have the chance to drive a police car, shoot an officer-issued weapon and ride-along with officers. 

Turner, and her classmates, weren’t studying for a test, going back to school or getting a certification. Instead, the Citizens Police Training Academy, offered by the Meridian Police Department, is designed to give residents an idea of how police officers work and the decisions they make. 

Mike Vick, with the Meridian Police Department, has graduated a few classes of residents and encourages alumni to visit and recruit more students. Most importantly, he stresses that the investigation process seen on television rarely correlates with the real lives of police officers. 

“We know we can’t do it without the community,” Vick tells the class, adding that he hoped this class would open up communication between the community and the police department.

The dozen students focused on Tuesday’s presentation from Stephen Wilson, a Meridian attorney in private practice, following along closely despite the technical terms and legal jargon. Students asked questions and discussed interpretations of amendments, frequently digressing from the slideshow to discuss theoretical situations.

Wilson discussed the importance of the fourth amendment to officers, which outlines warrants, searches and seizures. He and Vick discussed how this applied to stopping-and-frisking a passerby and when that was legally allowed.

Vick told the students how spotting suspicious behavior helped him stumble onto a burglary ring at a traffic stop.

“He was white knuckling the steering wheel. I walk up to him and he won’t even look at me – which is unusual,” Vick said.

Vick, prodded the man and asked pointed questions, pretending he knew what stressed the man. Eventually, Vick got him to open up and discovered thousands of dollars in stolen goods. Police were able to arrest a few others. 

“It was body language, it’s always body language,” Vick said. 

Turner said she joined the class and recruited three friends because she wanted to understand law enforcement officers after her husband, Ron Turner, with the Meridian Housing Authority, took the class a few years ago.

“I was interested in knowing what a citizen could offer to the department,” Turner said. “I’ve learned that a police officer willingly puts himself in a position that’s more dangerous than I thought.”

Last week, Turner and the other students took a gun simulation session that allowed them to make the decisions of law enforcement. In the first scenario, nearly every student failed after a woman with a mental illness stabbed a nurse because students didn’t want to hurt the mentally ill woman. 

The simulation made Turner, who failed, reconsider her thoughts on police.

“When I did the gun simulation, even though I knew the gun was fake, I was nervous because I thought, who am I going to shoot?… Now I ask myself, when someone asks why police did this or did that, do you really know the big picture?”

Turner said she’d recommend the class to anyone, especially her daughter’s age group in their young 20s and school children. Turner used the work with the Meridian Public School District and she said she thought this could be beneficial for not only honor students but also students with problems at school.

“I encourage anyone who has the time to sign up – and that’s every age,” Turner said.