CINCINNATI — Justin Sedgwick can't quite put into words why he's always wanted to be a police officer, but the moment of clarity dawned on him inside an eighth-grade classroom.
"I was like, 'I want to be a police officer,'" the 21-year-old said. "And it's just something I've never really been able to explain. It's just I had that feeling. I wanted to help people. I want to make a difference in this community."
What Sedgwick can explain is how the Cincinnati Police Department Understudy Program has prepared him for what comes next. As one of the original 12 high school graduates who joined in 2023, Sedgewick is now poised to enter the police academy with experience that many of his peers won't have.
"The things that they teach at the academy, some of that is not going to be new to us," Sedgwick said. "We're going to know it already, we're going to have a feeling for it already, so it's going to be very natural for us."
For 21-year-old Melia Newburn, who joined the program in February 2025, the path to law enforcement began in a classroom at the University of Cincinnati. Her professor, CPD Capt. Joe Richardson told her about the opportunity.
"I knew I wanted to be in the police academy here in Cincinnati, so that stood out to me," said Newburn, who grew up in Steubenville, Ohio. "It was a great opportunity for me to learn more about Cincinnati specifically."
Newburn and Sedgwick were among those welcoming 11 new understudies at the CPD academy building Monday. This class is the latest in what has become a permanent fixture at CPD. The program's roster now includes 24 paid interns pursuing college degrees who are seeking real-world law enforcement experience.
WATCH: We sit down with some of the police understudies
Because CPD recruits must be at least 21 years old by the time they graduate from the police academy, the Understudy Program functions as a pipeline for those who are still too young to wear the badge.
The understudies rotate through different units throughout CPD, gaining comprehensive exposure to law enforcement operations. They see how patrol work connects to investigations, how community policing initiatives develop and what really happens behind the scenes of police work.
"So whether that's a police district or like a specialized unit, such as homicide, CGIC, which is the crime gun intelligence center, or the traffic unit, you can transfer to different assignments and gain more insight while learning," Newburn said. "With the academy, you're learning strictly in a classroom and different scenarios on how to become a police officer. So the difference is you can move around and you're an intern, so you're not really a police officer, but they're learning to become a police officer."
The program isn't new, but rather a modern adaptation of the Police Cadet Program that ran from 1955 to the late 1970s.
"It brought in around 500 police officers who eventually rose all the way through the ranks and even were police chiefs," Lt. Shannon Heine said.
That original program ended due to funding constraints, but returned in 1996 under then-chief Michael Snowden and ran until 2004 when budget issues again forced its discontinuation.
In 2023, Cincinnati City Council revived the initiative through a partially funded pilot program. It is now fully funded through grants and the city budget. In August 2025, the city manager applied for a grant of up to $175,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice to enhance the program's recruiting and retention efforts.
CPD is currently around 100 officers short of its full complement of 1059 officers. This comprehensive exposure addresses a critical challenge in police recruitment.
Too often, new recruits enter the academy with a limited understanding of what police work actually entails, Heine said.
"It's very beneficial because if you take the regular recruit who just has the idea, 'Oh, I think I want to be a policeman,' and then they apply for the test and they go through that whole hiring process and they're thrown into a police academy and they're trained, and then they get down into the street, and it may not be anything of what they really thought they were getting into," Heine said. "But if you're in the pipeline program as an understudy, you get that insight. And you really get to see the inner workings of what it takes to be a policeman, what the real surrounding is in a law enforcement environment, and really what those calls for service are like and what the background is and what work goes into it."
The results speak for themselves: three of the original 12 understudies have already graduated from the police academy, with another five currently in training. Nine understudies, including Sedgwick and Newburn, are slated to enter the academy in April.
"It's a win because you're building leaders not only within the community, but within the department," Heine said. "So if we can, and to give them that insight into what the career really is and what it could be for them in their future, we're sustaining them too. So we want to keep them here longer and for an entire career. So, not just a stepping stone."
Heine said the current group of understudies hail from as far as Minnesota and eastern Pennsylvania. Alassane Barry, 22, is a first-generation American who was raised in Philadelphia before moving to Cincinnati. He joined the program in February.
"I've always been interested in being a police officer," Barry said. "(Being) from Philadelphia, where nobody likes the police — I moved down here for a better opportunity to be a police officer."
As someone who understands the challenges facing police-community relations, Barry said he sees his participation as part of a larger solution.
"A program like this is very important because, especially for people that look like me, that have a big gap with the police, feel like it's really important for them to see people like us in policing to be able to be comfortable in talking to us or asking for help," Barry said. "My main goal is to try to motivate more people that look like me, to join the understudy program and, at the end, be a police officer because we need more people like us that's able to help our people."
Sedgwick said he sees the understudy program as part of addressing broader challenges in police recruitment during divisive times.
"I think that as these times change, a lot of people are a lot—it's like it's divided. It's a very divided time these days, and I think that people are looking to point fingers at things rather than try to effect change and make change in their communities," Sedgwick said. "And I think that's one of the reasons why it's not as big as it used to be. I think people are just trying to talk and not take a lot of action."
All three understudies share a common motivation: serving their community during difficult times.
"I love being in the community. I love interacting with everybody. I like to get to know everybody, and I feel like police officers are usually called on like one of the worst days," Newburn said. "So I would like to be there and help them as much as I can while ensuring to them, like everything will be okay and we're here to help."
