Education

Wake Tech law enforcement graduates recognize challenges of their new careers

At a time when law enforcement agencies nationwide are struggling to hire new officers, the latest graduates of Wake Technical Community College's Basic Law Enforcement Training Program recognize they're desperately needed.

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By
Amanda Lamb
, WRAL reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — At a time when law enforcement agencies nationwide are struggling to hire new officers, the latest graduates of Wake Technical Community College's Basic Law Enforcement Training Program recognize they're desperately needed.

The Raleigh Police Department has 104 vacancies, while the Durham Police Department has 80 and the Wake County Sheriff's Office has about two dozen.

"I just really look forward to helping people, informing people, reaching out to people in the community," said Zachary Arnold, one of 23 people who graduated from the BLET program on Tuesday.

Most of the graduates already have landed jobs with police departments in Cary and Fuquay-Varina and at North Carolina State University, among others.

"One of my main motivations, especially in the last few years, is to bridge the gap between policing and the public," graduate Sean Nguyen said.

The racial reckoning that has occurred over the past year is changing policing in the U.S.

"You have to have the mindset to take care of yourselves as much as you want to serve and protect others," Teia Poulin, who retired from the State Highway Patrol, told the graduating class. "You have to put your own oxygen mask on first."

"[There's] a lot of hate towards law enforcement and public safety. This campus and this college has done a lot to prepare us for that," Arnold said.

He and the other graduates said they hope to reverse the narrative that law enforcement officers are bad.

"[We need to be] changing the view of the negative stigma that's out there right now, changing the view that's towards us and towards law enforcement and other public safety, and just kind of reshape that to what it's supposed to be," Arnold said.

Gage Trenum, who said he's following in his father's footsteps in law enforcement said he simply wants people to see him as another person who happens to wear a badge.

"We're human," Trenum said. "I wake up in the morning like everyone else, and I want nothing but the best for the community."

One of the most poignant moments of the ceremony was when officials recognized fallen officers, including Knightdale police Officer Ryan Hayworth who graduated from the Wake Tech BLET program in June and was killed by a suspected drunk driver in October.

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