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KIRKSVILLE, MO. -- It was a jammed-packed class during week 7 of the Kirksville Citizens’ Police Academy.

The students learned everything from professional standards to social networking to crime scene investigations.

The first part of the class, students focused on Internal Affairs and what that department deals with.

They also had a chance to hear about some real life investigations conducted by that department.

Afterward, the class learned about social networking and how it plays an important role for the Kirksville Police Department.

“Social networking was a venture that we started on a few years ago, and basically the focus on that was to reach the public and try and get information out to them,” said Kirksville Police Department’s Detective, Jeremy Cordray. “Whether it’s timely information that we’re looking for a suspect or whether they need to watch out for a suspect in their area and for us to basically go out and knock on everyone’s door virtually instead of physically allow a greater opportunity to get that much needed information out.”

The department runs their own Twitter page, Facebook Page and they also use a program called Text Caster, that program allows the department to send notifications to you via email or text.

“Social networking has been very successful for us, but very time consuming as well,” said Det. Cordray. “We don’t have a full time person that is able to do the social network aspect of it is, but we try and put as much into it as we can and get the needed information out to the public.”

The class also focused on crime scene and narcotics investigation.

They learned about different cases the department deals with as well as looked at specific cases the detectives have handled in the past.

Those cases include everything from homicides to assault.

And what the class realized is what you see on crime TV shows, isn’t what really happens in real life.

“Our focus during this class was not how to do an investigation, but just to understand all the steps that are involved when it comes to solving a case,” said Det. Cordray. “We wanted the students to understand that its not like CSI, things don’t get solved in a half hour or an hour like the show portrays, there is still a follow up that needs to be done and there’s a lot of thinking outside of the box.”

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