Gilbert high school’s criminal justice program adds CCTV, blood splatter rooms, mock court

GILBERT — Students at Williams Field High School in Gilbert can now work on fake crime scenes to explore criminal justice careers without ever leaving campus.

Last Friday, the WFHS Criminal Justice program expanded, opening a new facility with a dispatch and CCTV room.

It’s a comprehensive center with a blood splatter room, a forensics lab, a firearm simulator, two jail cells and a mock court.

Why Williams Field High School upgraded its criminal justice course

Students like Cohen Crowder, a senior in the program, can leave with three different certifications:

• Crime scene manager.
• Arizona unarmed guard card.
• Certified protection officer.

Before the facility was built, students in the program used regular classrooms.

“We were often using blood samples or blood splatter on tables and on whiteboards,” Crowder told KTAR News 92.3 FM.

“A blood splatter room, by comparison, gives us a far more holistic, three-dimensional assessment of how blood splatters (look) or how an attack might have happened,” he said.

After graduation, Crowder wants to pursue a career than involves creating technology to help law enforcement officers.

Criminal justice course prepares Gilbert students for future careers

Instructor Herb Williams said the advanced technology in the new rooms will help prepare students for careers in law enforcement, forensics or law.

“We have 21 college credits, also,” Williams said. “(We’re) teaching them the advanced skills that that we really couldn’t do in the small classroom. Now we can really enhance that, and we have the space to do that.”

One of his favorite lessons involves a hole in the backyard, where he buries fake bodies for students to dig up and analyze.

A new addition he’s especially excited for is the mock court.

“That will be the most exciting part to me, the opportunity to both prosecute and defend and help give students a fair trial,” Williams said said.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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