Millbrook police revive free Junior Police Academy for kids this summer
Millbrook police will cap each free Junior Police Academy class at 25 students as kids try crime scenes, K-9 demos and mock traffic stops.
Millbrook police will bring back its free Junior Police Academy this summer with two five-day sessions designed to show children how officers work, train and make decisions on the job. The department will hold the academy June 8-12 and June 22-26, with each class limited to 25 students.
The program will put young participants through a series of hands-on demonstrations that go well beyond a tour of badges and patrol cars. Planned sessions include crime-scene investigations, traffic-stop scenarios, impaired-driving demonstrations, K-9 and special response team demonstrations, and live Taser and OC spray demonstrations. Corporal White, Lieutenant Henson and Captain Youngblood are preparing to welcome the students into what the department describes as an engaging and educational experience.
The academy’s focus is public safety education, but it also gives families a close look at how Millbrook police say they operate in the community. The City of Millbrook says the department’s mission is to prevent crime and ensure citizen safety in partnership with the community, and the youth academy fits squarely within that approach. Children who take part will see the teamwork, judgment and training behind day-to-day policing, not just the uniform.
The academy has become a recurring summer program in Millbrook. Local reporting shows it was held in 2019, 2021 and 2022. In 2019, 11 cadets graduated. After COVID-19 canceled the academy the previous year, the department returned in 2021 with two camps. One class graduated 19 students and the second graduated 18, with the week led by Lt. Stephen Youngblood and School Resource Officer Kristen Godwin. In 2022, the academy graduated 54 cadets, again under Youngblood and Godwin.
Captain Youngblood has framed the academy as more than a recruiting tool. He pointed to the kind of memory a child can carry from a positive encounter with an officer, saying programs like this can leave lasting impressions on a new generation. That makes the Junior Police Academy a small but direct form of trust-building between Millbrook police and local families.
The distinction matters. Alabama’s basic police training runs 560 hours over 14 weeks for new officers, a reminder that the academy is not formal law-enforcement training. Instead, it is an introduction to the work behind the badge, built for children who want to see how officers investigate, communicate and respond when the city needs them.
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