Some low level fifth graders just graduated, not from a school, but from the great program that stands for Gang resistance Violence and Training.

An officer from the Louisville Metro Police taught students at Johnson Towne Road Elementary School the ABCs of staying out of a gang.

We had some students as young as third grade that were actually kind of not really foreman like for real gangs, but yet had a lot of the gang speak and a lot of the gang.

And they were actually even talking about, you know, like certain people being in gangs and things of that nature.

And not just this year, but actually in past years, I've had other students that I could tell as young as first grade that were being groomed for gangs.

One of my foremost formers students was killed as part of a gang initiation, at least so we heard.

And he was a freshman in high school, and I did not want that to continue to be the narrative for some of these kids.

I wanted them to be able to see and have an outlet to make better choices.

We have fifth graders.

We have 60 kids.

And we're really essentially telling them that drug gangs are bad.

And, you know, we teach them life skills which which remind navigate life making good decisions so they don't grow up later on and get into that.

The crime that we're seeing in the city right now.

Learn more about the community, what's in our community.

We learn about talking about our feelings, pulling down, not being anger angry, and we learn about peer pressure and bullying.

We learn how those things are about how to control those things and how to interact with people in our communities, to not bully, offend people or physically injure them.

We graduated from a great program and we was learning about how gangs and how we should stay away from that stuff because it's bad and it can send us to places that we don't want to go.

My favorite part of the class is where we get candy, to be honest.

We got candy at the end of class.

I feel good.

And also I know a lot of stuff about a great program and I love things that I can use in life.

I would like to say that if you ever want to if you ever want to do the great program, you should, because it teaches you a lot of things.

And so you day one, you walk in as an officer, Oh, why the cops or something bad must have happened.

Well, then they get to know me and they realize this is fun.

She brings us candy, she talks to us, she plays with us, she hugs us.

And then that's happening here at Johnson Town Elementary School.

Right.

And I've had a couple of kids have been exposed to that in their homes.

And so it's nice to see within my little six weeks, I could see that slightly change in their minds and some hope.

And I've seen two kids that have open themselves up to a police officer on day one.

They said, I don't like the police literally.

And now we are six weeks later, they're giving me hugs.

So this spreads to JCP and to the city.

So that'll happen hopefully in the future.

All these shootings we're seeing, all these crime scene with kids won't happen.

Good Program Officer Rachel Phillips had her first time teaching the great program and she told us she's looking forward to doing it again next semester.