By Elizabeth Bonin, Staff Writer

(March 12, 2020) Students at Worcester Technical High School in Newark can jump start on a career in law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services and public safety through the criminal justice and homeland security programs.

The homeland security program, which started in 2017, is a base for all public safety disciplines, according to instructor Mike Levy, who began teaching in 2013.

Mike Levy

“You need instant command system knowledge and the national emergency management system knowledge to apply for most public safety jobs, whether it be the homeland security side or the criminal justice side or the fire EMS [emergency medical services] side,” Levy said.

The one-year program, which accepts all high school grades, offers certification opportunities for the federal emergency management agency, geographical information systems, CPR and first aid.

Levy added that homeland security, which started with 21 students this year, is unique because it is so new. The federal department is only 18 years old.

“Every year, something dramatic shifts and changes because it has to adapt to all of the emerging threats, whether it’s terrorism, the traditional terrorism that we think about, to cyber terrorism, to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,” Levy said.

Jimmy Barrios-Hernandez, a senior at Stephen Decatur High School, completed the homeland security program his sophomore year and finished criminal justice last semester.

He said homeland security is more focused on how to keep a population safe.

“We had a whole table set up to figure out if something like a terrorist attack happened in this place, where we would set up and how we would do this,” Barrios-Hernandez said. “It’s basically the incident command system that we would use. We got a lot of diplomas from it – FEMA certifications. In criminal justice, you learn more about the law and then the forensic side of it.”

For criminal justice, which had 26 students this year, juniors take intro to criminal justice and administration of criminal justice and then move on to forensic science I and II to complete the year-and-a-half program their senior year.

Levy said the first half of the program is more academic – the students learn about search and seizure, case laws and the structure of policing.

The second half is learning more hands-on skills such as fingerprint collection, fingerprint analysis and DNA collection.

If they complete the course with a B or higher, those credits can be applied to the criminal justice program at Wor-Wic Community College.

Levy said that the program at Worcester Tech has easier access to learning opportunities because it collaborates with the other school departments, such as using cars from automotive.

“We can put fingerprint powder on them from one end to the other,” Levy said. “We can sort of rip them apart to show them how things can be hidden in cars.”

Students also visit the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore and the anatomy gift registry surgical lab.

Levy said that student assumptions are immediately challenged in class.

Photon courtesy Mike Levy
Taylor Baylous, left, a senior at Pocomoke High School, and Devon Tucker, a senior at Stephen Decatur High School, search for finger prints on a car for the criminal justice program at Worcester
Technical High School in Newark.

“When you collect a piece of evidence, there’s a process for how it’s collected, how it’s packaged, what’s accounted for, rules of evidence and chain of custody,” Levy said. “They have to do it in a legal manner as well as a scientific manner, so that it can be court accepted and used as evidence. You don’t see that on TV and the students learn very quickly that the level of documentation that is necessary to investigate a crime scene is very high.”

He added that this class gives students an edge for internships and jobs. One former student is interning with the Worcester County State’s Attorney’s Office, another with the public defender’s office and one with the state department of child protective services.

In addition, former students have jobs in law enforcement, emergency management, fire service, the military and other state offices.

Hayden Gable, a senior at Stephen Decatur, said that he wouldn’t be an intern as a public safety officer with the Ocean City Police Department if it weren’t for the criminal justice program.

“I have different training in terms of crime scene investigation and these different certifications that I feel like put me above the rest in terms of a pool of applicants toward a summer job with the Ocean City Police Department,” Gable said. “The different certifications and skills that we gain in this class is unlike any other.”

He wants to go on to work as an officer and hopefully move up to state police and then a federal agency.

Barrios-Hernandez, who has the same internship with the OCPD, explained that they primarily process people as they come into the police department, including paperwork and working with the computer software system.

He added that he’s already practiced many of the skills needed.

“On the property, you have to write down everything on a piece of paper and then you fill it out – exactly what they have,” Barrios-Hernandez said. “If you miss something, it can be real bad, so that’s why I’m thankful we did it over at the tech school.”

Emma Hamilton-Blackford, who graduated from Stephen Decatur High School in 2018, works as a custody officer, she said thanks to the criminal justice program and internship.

“It opened all the doors for me to be hired here – meeting people and offering me this internship – so I could meet the people I would potentially be working with and getting a summer job,” Hamilton-Blackford said. “You can’t get a job at 18 in the criminal justice field anywhere else.”

She hopes to enroll in a police academy next year and work as an officer in Ocean City.

Levy, who is a former Ocean City officer and air force cop, said he is proud of the students and their accomplishments.

“Our community here on the Eastern Shore is blessed to have these dedicated, young students who want to do this,” Levy said. “If they’re willing to put in the time, I’m going to give them every single experience I can and every bit of the knowledge that I’ve learned in my 30-plus years of doing this.”

This article is part of an ongoing series highlighting Worcester Technical High School programs. The school, located in Newark, Maryland, serves students in grades 9 through 12 enrolled in the three area high schools – Stephen Decatur, Pocomoke and Snow Hill. More than 20 programs are available for study.

The mission of Worcester Technical High School, “a progressive public secondary school which offers students the opportunity to prepare for both the world of work and post-secondary education, is to provide high quality career education and training programs through holistic teaching and learning.”

For more information, visit https://worcestertechhs.com.