What is the Police Explorers organization?

It’s a national thing. We will be going to Nationals soon. We go to State and do competitions there. Then we go to Nationals and we do competitions there, but the scenarios are going to be different. We are competing at a bunch of different posts in the United States.

What kind of competitions?

We go through a bunch of different scenarios and we do traffic stops, search and arrest, interrogations, bomb threats, hostage situations and stuff like that. We are going to State in April and we are going to compete and see who gets the highest score.

What got you interested in Police Explorers?

I’ve always been interested in law enforcement and my buddy who’s been in this for three years was like, “hey Elias, you should join,” and I was like, “may as well, I’ve got nothing else to do.”

What do you do in Police Explorers?

I go after school on Tuesdays and reenact scenarios and (the station) brings in actors and they will play as the suspect or the victim. And we have to figure out what happened. We do the exact same stuff that a police officer would if they went to a real scenario.

How has Police Explorers impacted your life today?

I’ve applied for scholarships through Police Explorers.

What are you doing now to prepare?

I am doing Police Explorers to give me some insight about what I want to go into.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a detective.  I’m going to college for law enforcement, and then I am going to a police academy.

What has being involved in Police Explorers taught you?

This taught me that you have to be patient with a lot of people and people will give you false information. There’s a lot of small details that go into everything that people don’t really discuss when they talk about law. It’s taught me to have all the facts.

How has Police Explorers applied to your life now?

Every time I am in a situation, I try to make sure I have all the facts. When in Boy Scouts there is a problem I usually am the one who tries to solve the problem, I try to talk to both groups, try to get the facts from the groups, figure out who started it, who continued doing it and get them both to apologize.

Why do you do Police Explorers?

I do it because I have always had an interest in law enforcement, and I wanted to learn more about it. The reason why I stayed in it is because it’s a lot of fun. Lots of people think it’s weird to want to be a police officer and they’re like “but everyone will hate you.” I think part of why I want to do it is to prove them wrong. I want to prove to people that police aren’t bad.

Who has been a mentor for you?

My uncle was a detective and he’s told me a bunch of stories about some of his cases and I thought they were interesting and would be fun to solve. I like puzzle solving and that’s another reason why I enjoy (Police Explorers).