Call it a sign of the times but the recent graduates from the Northern Michigan University Public Safety Institute all had jobs before they left the university.

“It is amazing to see,” training director Adam Maynard told The Mining Journal. “All of them are already hired. A lot of the times you’d exit the academy and look for a job. We are so short on officers that departments are hiring to put people in the academy.”

According to NMU, the 20 new would-be officers will be spread out among a dozen departments across the Upper Peninsula. The graduates went through a 16-week course involving many aspects of training, including martial combat, gun training, textbook work and more.

“Most of the time when you want to be a cop, you want to stay in the area. So we are happy that we can send the

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