Hi, my name is Kade Johnson. I am a freshman at the College of Southern Idaho trying to pursue my goal of becoming a law enforcement officer. I have always wanted to become a police officer ever since I was little. The men and women in blue I always considered to be my heroes. In 2023 however, I experienced something in my life that made me even want to pursue my dreams even more. In January of 2023, on my parents' anniversary, my cousin committed suicide on the Perrine Bridge. He was only 17. My relationship with him was pretty strong. I never knew what he was going through and I will forever not know. His death is making me want to be a cop so I can help other families not go through what my family had to go through. I got mad at my cousin because I was just five or six miles away when he did it. He did not reach out to me or anyone else and I was so angry at him. If he would have just called, I could have probably saved his life. If I become a cop, I will be able to answer that call and will always do my best to make sure no family has to experience what I went through. I have always wanted to help others. My friends say that I am just like my mom, a problem solver and making sure everyone is okay. I want to make that kind of difference in my community. I want to make sure my neighbors in my community are always safe, living comfortably, and can trust the police department. Lately, police officers have not been shining a good light across the nation. I believe I can fix that by setting an example to the police officer. My goal is to become a detective or to climb the ladder and maybe one day run the police department. Police need good leaders and I truly believe I can lead well. I am already practicing leadership at my current job right now. I am a team lead on the night shift at Pizza Factory in Jerome Idaho and I am so loving it. I want to set a great example and make a difference in the police departments as well as the community. Thank you for your time and thank you for considering my application.

I come from a military family. My father is retired Army. He was a SFC when he finished his 20 years of service. My dad was on anti-aircraft artillery, drove a truck, and then finished his career in the 101st WMD. I am sure he did other things in his career, but those are the only ones I remember so far. My dad served in the Gulf War and saw many interesting things. He served in Germany and has stories like you wouldn't believe! An example is when he drove a sports car on the autobahn! My dad got out of the military when I was born and I am glad because I have my family around and won't need to move every two to four years. I do have cousins in the military as well. I have two cousins in the Air Force; one is a colonel and the other is a major. They both have seen the world in their military career as officers. They are both about to retire with their 20 years and when they do, I hope they move back to their home state of Idaho because I love hanging out with my cousins over the summer and holidays. I will not join the military. I was thinking about it and following in my father's footsteps, but my parents don't want me to and I honestly don't think I should either. Instead, I want to follow my dreams of becoming a police officer. I always want to help people and keep them safe. I think becoming a police officer will be the best way to do that. Sure being in the military is protecting our people as well, but I want to protect my home state, my hometown, and I want to protect it every day. In the military, you can only help when you get orders from the US government to do so. Don't get me wrong, the military is a great branch of our government keeping our nation safe from our enemies. Coming from a military family, I respect their sacrifice and their time in the service. To me, however, it is just not the route that I would want to take. I feel like I will not be helping my community enough if I join the military. If I become a police officer, however, I can help protect the community every day and keep it safe. My main goal is to become a detective in the police department. I like mysteries and love to solve cases. This money will help me get a step closer to my dreams.

I have been lucky to have a lot of people who have been impactful in my life. I think the ones who have made the most impact on my life are my mom and dad. They have always been there for me and always supported me. My dad is a US Army veteran. He served for twenty-plus years for our country. My dad is a remarkable man. What is scary is that my dad and I think so much alike. One habit that I have picked up from my dad is always being prepared for stuff when I leave my house. He always packs prepared for things when we go on trips or into town. Another quality that I have picked up from him is leadership. My dad was a Sergeant First Class in the Army. He was and still is a great leader. I have started to pick up that leadership role at school and on my sports teams. My mom has amazing character traits. A couple of her qualities that I have adopted from her over the years are one, maintaining your cool under pressure, and two, being able to communicate with strangers. My mom grew up in the culinary business. She has dealt with the community all her childhood and even now today. Because of that reason, she can talk very well to other people. My mom has also learned to maintain her cool through stressful situations from her background in culinary as well. I started picking up these qualities and using them in school with my schoolwork. Somedays, my teachers would slam me with work and all have a very tight deadline. I learned to just stay calm because it would help me get more work done than me freaking out. My friend also likes to come and talk to me about their problems because I am easy to communicate with them. They know that I will listen to them and want to hear what they have to say. Being a police officer is a difficult job that I think I can handle. The qualities that I adopted from my parents will help me be a good cop. I can use my dad's qualities to always be prepared and can be a good leader. Being a police officer, you deal with the public all the time. So my qualities from my mom will help me too. With the qualities that I have adopted from her, I can communicate calmly with the public and can keep my cool in very stressful situations. I love helping others and being a cop has always been a dream of mine since I was little. I want to make a difference in the community I believe I can. We need people out there who will want to be leaders and protect the community and can keep their composure when the stress is high.

You know, every little kid dreams of being a firefighter or a police officer. I let that dream last longer throughout my life. My dream is to become a law enforcement officer. I have always wanted to become a cop. I do not know why, but it always interests me in something I want to do. I like helping people so I want to do that and make a difference in my community. I am currently a senior in high school and just have a couple more weeks left before I graduate. From there, I will move on to the College of Southern Idaho where I will double major in Criminology and Law Enforcement. I know that you don't need to go to college to become a cop, but with this route, I can do something while I wait for myself to turn twenty-one. It will also help me strive further and faster in law enforcement. The reason why I want to double major is because if I have a Criminology degree, it will help me open new doors in case I don't want to do law enforcement. After I graduate with my two degrees, I plan on becoming a cop for the Boise Police Department in Idaho right away. My main goal is to become a detective in either narcotics or homicide. I love mystery cases and I love helping people so that will be my dream of all dream jobs. If I don't become a detective, then I would still want to make a difference so I would want to climb the leadership ladder in the Police Department. Another division of the force that seems interesting to try is SWAT. Honestly, though, I don't care what division of the force I will be in or what rank I want to be, I just want to make a difference in my community and help make my community feel safer. Lately, police have been highlighted not in a good way in the news. That is another reason why I want to be a cop. The majority of the police departments have good officers. However, there are some bad apples in those good departments. That is why I want to be a cop. I want to add at least one more good cop in the community. The more good cops we have in our community, the safer the community will feel. Everybody has dreams and wants to make those dreams come true. If you want to make those dreams come true though, you have to work for it. That is certainly what I am doing right now. I am trying to get myself ahead of the game of becoming a cop. I already have job shadowed my school resource officer for the Jerome Police Department for my senior hours. I want this dream and I am determined to get it.

I come from a military family. My father is retired Army. He was a SFC when he finished his 20 years of service. My dad was on anti-aircraft artillery, drove truck, and then finished his career in the 101st WMD. I am sure he did other things in his career, but those are the only ones I remember so far. My dad served in the Gulf War and saw many interesting things. He served in Germany and has stories like you wouldn't believe! An example is when he drove a sports car on the autobahn! My dad got out of the military when I was born and I am glad because I get to have my family around and won't need to move every two to four years. I do have cousins in the military as well. I have two cousins in the Air Force; one is a colonel and the other one is a major. They both have seen the world in their military career as officers. They are both about to retire with their 20 years and when they do, I hope they move back to their home state of Idaho because I love hanging out with my cousins over the summer and holidays. I will not join the military. I was thinking about it and following in my father's footsteps, but my parents don't want me to and I honestly don't think I should either. Instead, I want to follow my dreams of becoming a police officer. I always want to help people and keep them safe. I think becoming a police officer will be the best way to do that. Sure being in the military is protecting our people as well, but I want to protect my home state, my hometown, and I want to protect it every day. In the military, you can only help when you get orders from the US government to do so. Don't get me wrong, the military is a great branch of our government keeping our nation safe from our enemies. Coming from a military family, I respect their sacrifice and their time in the service. To me, however, it is just not the route that I would want to take. I feel like I will not be helping my community enough if I join the military. If I become a police officer, however, I can help protect the community every day and keep it safe. My main goal is to become a detective in the police department. I like mysteries and love to solve cases.

I love math simply because it interests me. In math, there is always one right answer. English classes and other classes in that manner that have multiple right answers don't seem interesting to me. I need to know when I am right and when I am wrong. Another reason why I love math is that there are many ways to get to the same answer. I always find it fascinating that someone could use a different method of solving an equation than you and you still get the same answer as that person. What I also find interesting about math is when you are solving an equation, you have to do everything perfectly otherwise one little mistake can give you a different answer. That can be frustrating sometimes. I have fallen victim to that multiple times and I am sure many others have before. Just recently, I was working on an equation in my dual credit trigonometry class and I was stuck on this problem for almost 10 hours. I was saying to myself, "What am I doing wrong?". I was getting frustrated, but when I got back to school to ask my teacher what I was doing wrong, she pointed out to me that I put in a negative when I should have put in a positive! Those mistakes make me feel dumb but at the same time, it gives me a sense of relief that it wasn't major. Just one negative can flip your answer upside down entirely. That is the reason I love math. People say that math is boring but I say that math is interesting, and fun, and we can use it anywhere in our lives. Everywhere you go, you see math.