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Crime & Safety

Citizens Police Get a Peek into Law and Order

Lehigh County citizens police academy shows residents the inner workings of law enforcement.

The first meeting of the Lehigh County Citizens Police Academy on Tuesday night attracted college students and school nurses among the 30 area residents who wanted to learn more about the intricacies of police work.

They met at to hear stories like the one Peter Nickischer, a negotiator for the Lehigh County Crisis Negotiation Team, shared about how they ended a recent hostage situation with a young man on parole who held his mother at gunpoint in her Whitehall home earlier this month.

“It was seven or eight intense hours,” said Investigator Nickischer, also a member of Berks-Lehigh Regional Police Department. “The father was getting upset and demanding to know what was going on. He cut our phone line to the house. He ended up in handcuffs.”

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How did the standoff end?

“We knocked on the door,” said Upper Saucon Det. Tom Nicoletti, also a negotiator with the county team. For emphasis, he swung his arms widely to imitate a battering ram.

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The seven-week course, which is free for area residents, is sponsored by the Lehigh County Police Chiefs Association and the Lehigh County District Attorney’s office. It will include sessions on emergency response, homicide investigations, gangs, and other aspects of law enforcement.

The topics have an elevated importance in a recession, said Michael Weiser, chief of the .

“With the economy being the way it is, we’re seeing more people stressed and losing it,” Weiser said. “The number of shootings is up, and we lost two police officers over the summer. Anything you can do to make people more aware of how dangerous their jobs are as police officers is beneficial.”

Pat Brosious, a DeSales University sophomore, and his friend Bill Hunsicker, a freshman at Lehigh Carbon Community College, registered for the academy as a way to explore law enforcement as a career.  “It seemed like a good way to get an educated view of what being a police officer actually involves,” said Brosious, of Allentown.

Victoria Stenroos of Lower Macungie Township and Pamela Miller of Emmaus were hoping they would get some tips on how to better deal with emergencies and crisis situations that could arise. They are both nurses at East Penn schools.

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