Monday, August 21, is the deadline to enroll in the 2017 Citizens’ Academy, a free 10-week course intended to educate San Diegans on the criminal justice system.

Through a partnership between the San Diego District Attorney’s Office and the San Diego Sheriff’s Department the course will be offered on 10 consecutive Thursdays, September 7 through November 9 in Kearny Mesa.

Topics for this year’s fall 2017 academy include: human trafficking, computer and technology crimes, gang prosecutions, drug trends, and many more. Each topic is taught by a subject matter expert.

And this year, a new topic was added, which addresses homicide committed while driving under the influence.

“The Citizens’ Academy was started basically in response to questions and inquiries by the public about what our office actually does,” Kate Flaherty organizer of the academy and assistant chief of sex crimes and human trafficking division said.

Flaherty said people have a general idea of what the office does and that they prosecute all felonies in San Diego County but they also prosecute crimes that range from violent crimes to computer crimes.

“We educate people about how these things affect them personally,” Flaherty said. “And we talk about what kind of cases we can prosecute.”

Lisa Watkins-Bridges, coalition coordinator for Santee Solutions, participated in the fall 2016
Citizen’s Academy and said she was impressed by the collaborative effort of the DA’s Office and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

Watkins-Bridges said she not only learned about the complexity of what the two departments do but also the passion and the compassion of the people who work those cases.

“You walk away with an appreciation of what the system is intended to do,” Watkins-Bridges said. “You walk away with what the intention of these sworn officers are supposed to do including the DA’s office and when all of that works correctly the victims, get justice and that’s really what our system is about.”

Those interested in enrolling must be 18 years or older, submit an application and pass a background check. The background check is simply to see if those interested are registered as convicted felons, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are disqualified.

Applications are available at www.sdcda.org and can be emailed to citizensacademy@sdcda.org or faxed to 619-237-1351.