Laconia girl getting head start on career in law enforcement

LACONIA — Since 16-year-old Alexis Felch was a student at Laconia Middle School she has aspired to a career in law enforcement and last month stepped toward her goal by completing the first of three annual classes at the New Hampshire Police Cadet Training Academy.

Now in its 41st year, the Academy, is a week long residential program of the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police held at the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord. The program features a paramilitary structure and classroom instruction designed to foster discipline, pride and teamwork. Alexis was among some 130 enrolled in the basic class this year, of whom about a fifth were women.

"We got up at 5 a.m. for physical training before breakfast," Alexis said. "Then marched in formation to breakfast. We marched everywhere. At first I thought it was going to be a long week." She said that the cadets were woken in the middle of the night by fire alarms, for physical training and once by a cry of "officer down!"

Alexis said that transgressions of the rules —speaking out of turn, failing to address instructors as "sir," uniform askew and the like — warranted press-ups, counted as "one sir, two sir" and so on. Although an accomplished gymnast and varsity lacrosse player, she confessed "it was exhausting."

"There were lots of classes," Alexis said, "two in the morning, afternoon and evening." She said that the classes touched on various aspects of police work such as traffic control, criminal law, K-9 units, and forensic analysis. Among them, she said that she enjoyed those bearing on the analysis of crime scenes the most, noting that as a high school sophomore she scored 98 in a forensics course at the Huot Technical Center, where the final exam required students the assess the evidence collected at the site of a murder.

Alexis said that she was most impressed by an instructor who recalled his experience in the search for those who planted the bombs at the Boston Marathon. She said that he described being among the officers who encountered the suspects at night in Watertown and engaged them in a firefight. "He explained the risks of working in law enforcement," she remarked, adding that she was impressed but not dissuaded by experiences.

Likewise, Alexis said that during a panel discussion, at which cadets questioned officers about their work, she was taken when "they were telling us that each day, when you go to work, you don't know what's going to happen." She noted that this element of uncertainty is among the aspects of the career she finds most attractive.

A high honors student as a sophomore, Alexis has already enrolled in the two-year course in law enforcement at the Huot Center, which is taught by former Laconia Police Chief Mike Moyer. She also intends to apply for one of the 30 places in the advanced program at the Police Cadet Training Academy next summer, with hopes of winning one of the 15 places in the Leadership Class the year after.