BANGOR – The Bangor Police Department held a graduation ceremony earlier this year for youngsters in a police youth program the department sponsors.

“The best part of the week for me was helping in solving a crime,” said one of the kids.

The Kids ‘n’ Kops Program is the Bangor Police Department’s effort to educate youths in understanding the type of work and various roles that the police perform aside from the usual arresting of law offenders.

The program, established in 2000 by Bangor police officers Clifford Worcester and Paul White, was fashioned after a similar program of the Saint John Police Force in Bangor’s sister city in New Brunswick.

A Saint John officer said that since the program has had a positive impact on the juveniles in their community, he thought that it should do well in Bangor also.

The Kids ‘n’ Kops Program works in partnership with the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program, where 8- to 12-year-old boys and girls come from a waiting list for “matching up” with a Big Brother or Big Sister.

With all of the violence in the media and video games that kids are exposed to these days, the youngsters often don’t see police as positive role models. In the program, the police draw on friendship methods to “connect” with the youths with the intention of helping the kids free themselves of negative typecasting that they may have formed of police before involvement in the program.

Bangor police officers try to be positive role models to the youths by helping to build self-esteem, giving them guidance and helping them gain a positive outlook, not only toward themselves and the police, but toward life in general. In short, they try to be their friends.

“The kids come largely from single-parent homes where they may not have had any positive role models in their lives, and this program is good for them,” Worcester said.

As part of the program, the kids spend a week with police participating in police activities such as writing warning tickets, learning investigative techniques in a simulated police crime scene, learning polygraph and Internet safety usage, and other law-related classes. The kids also are taken on field trips to the Cole Land Transportation Museum, to play miniature golf and do other “fun things.”

Worcester said that he was very impressed with the professional manner in which members of the Saint John Police Force conducted themselves, and the hospitality shown to the Bangor police during their initial program inspection visit to Saint John.

At the end of the one-week the program in Bangor, the police, the kids and their parents celebrated with a cookout. The kids discussed with the police and their parents the personal experiences they had shared and how they had benefited from the program. After the cookout, Bangor police presented each youngster with a certificate of completion in a graduation ceremony.

The youths went away from the program with a greater understanding and respect for police and their work, with some of the youngsters saying they were looking forward to attending the program again next year.