At age 14, Lora Laster experienced a career in law enforcement for the first time. Laster, now an investigator in the Corpus Christi Police Department's Family Violence Unit, met that pivotal moment when she became a Police Explorer. That experience came at a critical stage of my life where I was trying to decide what career I wanted and if law enforcement was something that I wanted to do. There are more than 150 students who are Police Explorers in South Texas, said John Thurston, scout executive for the Gulf Coast Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Thurston said the program tries to reach students in 8th grade because that is when many of them begin to think about careers.
Kids get a disjointed idea of what law enforcement is.
They see a TV program about police and they see all the drama and excitement. But when they get into the Police Explorer program, they get a realistic view of what law enforcement is all about. Many area students who are Police Explorers attend local high schools including Robstown, Calallen, Flour Bluff, Moody and King, said Rudy Caceres, crime prevention specialist for the police department. Some of them may want to become lawyers or work in fields that deal with the judicial system or anything that requires the use of people skills. Caceres said students who shadow police officers wear uniforms and carry a police radio, but are not allowed to carry guns or to participate in police-related work that is deemed too dangerous.