One recent July morning in a riverside woods west of Eau Claire, 13 high-schoolers took turns firing practice versions of PepperBalls at an old steel drum and un-abolishing the police.

It was, as Sgt. Mike Major of the Eau Claire Police Department put it, “the cool, the fun day for the kids, where we show them all the tools we have.”

They also saw how to work the little drone that scouts out rooms during a stand-off, and the big infrared one that revolutionizes lost-person searches. They tried out very realistic Airsoft versions of police sidearms and peered out the roof hatch of the SWAT team’s armored car.

The teens — and the half-dozen or more police running the day on the range — were on Day 2 of the week-long Junior Police Academy that the Eau Claire department’s been running every summer for a decade now. Earlier sessions were for middle-schoolers. This year, there was a week for older teens to see what patrol officers do, tour the dispatch center, and process a mock crime scene with detectives.

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