Forget canoes and friendship bracelets — youngsters at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office Teen Academy summer camp shot guns and learned SWAT tactics.
The first of two summer camps for teens to introduce them to careers in the criminal justice and public service career fields ended Friday, wrapping up a week of field trips and challenges.
The goal is to show teenagers from 13 to 17 “all the functions and opportunities that the street is not going to offer,” said the program’s director, Awilda McBryde.
“That’s their crucial age where they don’t know what they want to do and they’re at that fork in the road where ‘I can go bad or I can go good,’” she said. “Our focus is so they can know that there are people out here that want their future to grow.”