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The ALEA Trooper Class 2024-B had their official pinning and graduating ceremony Thursday, commemorating their newest milestones within their careers as State Troopers within the State.

The grounds of the ALEA Training Center, located next to the George C. Wallace Community College campus in Selma was filled with families, friends and neighboring officers from Birmingham, Pell City, Selma and Bessemer that came out to support the graduating class’ latest achievement.

“One of the things that is allowing us to do this is the continued support from Gov. Kay Ivey, our state legislators, but also from Secretary Hal Taylor, who is over the Alabama law enforcement agency,” said Jeremy Burkett, lieutenant of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. “Through his decision-making process and through his planning, this is allowing us to graduate another 21 troopers to go out and work the highways including the waterways across the state of Alabama.”

Burkett said the agency as a whole was very excited for the graduating class, and their families because the training program required the troopers to be away from their respective hometowns for about 10 weeks.

“It is an accelerated academy,” said Burkett. “So, everybody that graduates today had prior law enforcement experience, and they have been away from their families for 10 weeks. So, today’s ceremony not only recognizes the accomplishments of the Troopers because they’ve undergone 10 weeks of very rigorous training, but it also allows us an opportunity to thank the families, because for 10 weeks, their loved ones haven’t been there to cut the grass or to do the things that they need to do. “

Burkett said several individuals within the class will graduate and go to the marine patrol division forcing the laws of the state-owned waterway. Others will move across the state, patrolling cities such as Opelika, Montgomery, Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile.

“And, that’s what we try to do. “Oftentimes, we try to be kind of targeted in the way that we recruit and hire individuals. We do have 67 counties in the state of Alabama, so we try to hire and recruit and send people to all of those places, because at the end of the day, we try to provide services to all citizens across the state of Alabama.”

One graduate of the training academy, Tyler Dison, said it was always a dream of his to better himself and achieve his ultimate goal of being a state trooper.

“I feel overwhelmed,” said Dison. “But, there is no better place than the Alabama State Troopers Academy. I just want to give thanks to God for blessing me with this opportunity to go out and better myself and just be on the roads.”

Dison said he was a police officer before getting into the state trooper academy and said he has always looked up to state troopers when he was out in the field.

“Whenever they are on the scene, they are the people you look at,” Dison said. “I wanted to be that guy always bettering myself because I don’t want to be stagnant in life.”

Dison’s brother Jesse said he is very proud of Tyler and said they started policing together in Rogersville.

“We spent four years serving together,” said Jesse. “Being that his dream was to become a state trooper, it makes me proud to see him commit to his dream and get it completed.”

Like Dison, fellow graduate Timothy Jerome Hawthorne was a police officer as well serving for the city of Mobile and was previously a Deputy Sheriff before he made his transition to pursue being a state trooper.

“Back in 2017, I became a police cadet,” said Hawthorne. “A year later within that same year. I became a police officer and in 2019, I stayed there… After that, I went to traffic safety in Mobile. I also rode motorcycles with the Mobile Police Department. And then, I stayed there for about seven years, and I left and I went to Mobile County Sheriff’s Office. I did about 10 months there, and I knew where I wanted to set my life at, and that was going to be, being an Alabama State Trooper. “

Hawthorne said it felt good to just have his family and friends out there to see him accomplish another goal and become the first state trooper of his family.

Hawthorne said he wants to tell anyone thinking of becoming a police officer or a state trooper or who would like to fall in any branch of law enforcement to make it to your goal, keep your head up high and you will get where you want to go.