{"id":56090,"date":"2025-06-05T18:23:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T22:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=56090"},"modified":"2025-06-05T18:24:01","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T22:24:01","slug":"lakeland-polices-trades-academy-aims-to-build-relationships-teach-trade-skills-to-teenagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/06\/05\/lakeland-polices-trades-academy-aims-to-build-relationships-teach-trade-skills-to-teenagers\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland police\u2019s Trades Academy aims to build relationships, teach trade skills to teenagers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tyirr Gray is entering her junior year of high school and already has a career path in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to be an architect and I\u2019ve been wanting to do that since I was about 10 years old,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gray said she wants to learn life skills and recognizes that there are careers where she can design her own schedule and be an entrepreneur.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cIf I\u2019m going to be an architect or a drafter, I want to know all the different aspects that go into building something,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, she signed up for the Lakeland Police Department\u2019s Summer Trades Academy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can see that there are a lot of girls here. I want them to see that it\u2019s available for them too. It\u2019s a new era,\u201d said Lakeland Police Lt. Joe Parker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lt. Parker was raised by his father, a union carpenter, and grew up as his helper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he served in the Army and worked in commercial construction as a superintendent before becoming a police officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the Summer Trades Academy was his answer to a spike in juvenile crime during the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a way to teach kids while also building their relationships with law enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t just teach them about the trades. We teach them about work ethic, integrity, personal responsibility, social networking, why long-term relationships are important to them,\u201d said Lt. Parker.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The free academy exposes Polk County high school-aged children to a wide array of trades, including carpentry, plumbing, HVAC and masonry, the latter of which was the focus on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to spend time with my friends over the summer, but I know this is more valuable and I\u2019ll learn more things and I\u2019ll better myself going to some place like this and learning,\u201d said Stellan Hendrick, who is entering his sophomore year of high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lt. Parker invites trade professionals to share their knowledge as well, including Frank Rebecky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a passion to see my trade be developed more in the industry,\u201d said Rebecky, VP of Field Operations at AD Morgan Corporation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masonry could benefit from young talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe construction trade is in need of good tradesmen and trade partners. For many years, it\u2019s been neglected,\u201d said Rebecky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applications are closed for the current academy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applications for next year\u2019s academy<\/a> are expected to open next February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tyirr Gray is entering her junior year of high school and already has a career path in mind. \u201cI want to be an architect and I\u2019ve been wanting to do… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDZcL1NjcmVlbnNob3QtODktMi53ZWJwP2ZpdD00MjUlMkMxNjImc3NsPTEiLCJ0eHQiOiJMYWtlbGFuZCBwb2xpY2VcdTIwMTlzIFRyYWRlcyBBY2FkZW15IGFpbXMgdG8gYnVpbGQgcmVsYXRpb25zaGlwcywgdGVhY2ggdHJhZGUgc2tpbGxzIHRvIHRlZW5hZ2VycyIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.M1BunBE2StxKT9S-h5HoP05xqvTGV-WJW9BZjOKLLTMMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":56092,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Screenshot-89a.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[11608,11609],"class_list":["post-56090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-lakeland-polices-trades-academy-aims-to-build-relationships","tag-teach-trade-skills-to-teenagers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56093,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56090\/revisions\/56093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}