Tri-county law enforcement leaders promote effort to recruit local, diverse officers - MLive.com
MIDLAND, MI — Mid-Michigan law enforcement leaders gathered at the Midland Police Department building Wednesday, March 30, to discuss and promote the Bridge The Gap academy program, an effort to help recruit and train diverse local police officers.
Bridge The Gap is a local nonprofit organization that works to build positive relationships between police and the communities they serve. The organization’s scholarship program helps candidates from the Great Lakes Bay Region and pays their way through the police academy, as well as partnering with local police agencies to give the cadets a salary while they study, Saginaw attorney and Bridge the Gap board member Ayiteh Sowah said.
The program aims to help 15 to 20 candidates this year, Sowah said.
“It is expensive; it costs just about $9,000 to go to the police academy,” Sowah said. “The average young individual is not going to have that money to be able to afford the academy themselves out-of-pocket and also work a regular 9-to-5 when they’re in the academy from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.”
The group of law enforcement officers and officials attending the conference included Saginaw County Sheriff William Federspiel, Saginaw Police Chief Bob Ruth, Buena Vista Township Police Chief Reggie Williams II, Bay City Public Safety Director Michael Cecchini, Saginaw Valley State University Police Chief Clifford Block, Midland Police Chief Nicole Ford and Midland County Sheriff Myron Greene.
Sowah pointed to Ford, the Midland Police Department’s first female chief; and Williams, the region’s only Black police chief, as examples of the strides the region is making with diversity and inclusion.
“Predominantly, we do have all white men, but that is changing,” Sowah said. “We looked at this as ‘our police agencies should mirror our community,’ and we know that that’s not always the case.”
The program tries to ensure its cadets are eventually placed with their local agencies, Sowah said.
This year, a Saginaw school principal called Sowah to get in contact with Officer Jordan Bady rather than call 911, he said. Bady said the relationship he established with the community — where he is known by some for his dance moves — helps him build trust and successfully communicate with Saginaw’s youth.
“People request me often because of the rapport that I have built within the Saginaw community,” Bady said. “Because I grew up in Saginaw city, (residents) now look at me as one of them, and they are very, very excited, most of the time, to talk to me.”
Officer Sarah Irish, born and raised in Bay County, went through the program last year and she now works for the Bay City Department of Public Safety. Like Bady, Irish’s relationship with her community gives her a connection with the residents she’ll be working with every day, Sowah said.
The opportunity to stay within her community was important to Irish, and being able to give back was exciting to her, she said. She encouraged anyone potentially interested in a career in law enforcement to apply for the program.
“It might sound cliché, but honestly, the opportunity was life-changing for me,” Irish said.
“I was a full-time college student, working full-time, and I always knew where I wanted to end up in law enforcement. But trying to finance that and also then be able to focus on just going to school and getting into the police academy, it just seemed like there was no way. The sponsorship allowed me to purely focus on the police academy and put all my energy and efforts into that, and not worry about a financial burden.”
Federspiel, a supporter of the program since its inception in 2018, had no similar local help when he was growing up on Saginaw’s east side, he said. He had to travel to Florida to attend a program that was able to put him through the police academy.
He thanked fellow police leaders for getting on board with the program and helping keep more local law enforcers within their communities.
“It’s a program that works, and that’s why I stay involved with it,” Federspiel said. “The only reason I’m here is because someone took a chance on me 1,500 miles away, put me through the police academy and paid me a wage.”
Applications are due Friday, April 15. The program is open to anyone who has resided in the region for more than three years and has a high school degree or GED, a valid driver’s license and no pending criminal charges.
Those interested can download an application on the organization’s website here.
Read more:
Organization seeks increased diversity, sending recruits to police academy in Great Lakes Bay Region
source: https://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw-bay-city/2022/03/tri-county-law-enforcement-leaders-promote-effort-to-recruit-local-diverse-officers.html
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