Breaking stereotypes: Mercyhurst hosts youth camp with Police Athletic League, highlighting modern law enforcement roles
Let’s try a word association game: I say “law enforcement,” you say…
Very likely you’ll respond with “police” or maybe “cop.”
What you won’t say is “cybercrime investigator,” “digital forensic examiner,” or “intelligence analyst.”
And yet it's all part and parcel of enforcing the law today.
That’s what 30 middle and high school students will learn at Mercyhurst University when the Police Athletic League (PAL) visits campus for a two-day special camp July 17-18, hosted by the Center for Intelligence, Research, Analysis, and Training (CIRAT).
PAL is well known for its summer camps, which encourage the police and young community to get to know each other, build trust in law enforcement among children, and keep kids constructively engaged after the school year ends.
Through PAL’s partnership with Mercyhurst’s CIRAT, students who aspire to a career in law enforcement learn the many different options available to them from faculty, staff, and students from the university’s premier programs in cyber security, data science, and intelligence analysis.
“This two-day camp is going to have 30 students broken up into two teams,” explained Cpl. Hayden Foltz of the Erie Police Department. “Each group is going to spend a whole day completing either the Computing and Information Science or the Intelligence agenda and then switching for the next day.”
Law enforcement today is no longer just community policing or boots-on-the-ground detecting, explained CIRAT Executive Director Brian Fuller, who is leading the Mercyhurst effort.
“The world criminals thrive in has become the digital environment. Technology has provided criminals a way to stay ahead of physical policing and reduce the risk to getting caught while increasing the return on criminal activities,” he said. “It now takes support roles in law enforcement, such as cybersecurity professionals, intelligence analysts, and data scientists, to catch and stay ahead of these criminals while providing law enforcement officers actionable intelligence to get them off the streets. This camp will provide the students of PAL with a glimpse into these roles.”
Students will fully interact with state-of-the-art technologies in CIRAT labs, which are housed in the Federal Resources Corp. Cyber Education Center at Mercyhurst.