Makenna Fay spent five months riding with Port Washington police officers, handling detective equipment, and sitting through briefing meetings across multiple divisions. Not filing papers. Not answering phones.
The rising St. Mary’s High School senior wrapped up her stint with the Port Washington Police District in March, completing a program that ran from November 2025 through the end of winter. By most accounts, it was the kind of experience that either confirms a career path or quietly closes a door. Either way, useful.
This is worth paying attention to, because most internships handed to high schoolers are glorified clerical assignments. You sit at a desk. You learn how a printer jams. You get a certificate. The Port Washington program is built differently, and that difference matters for Nassau County families trying to figure out whether their kids are actually learning anything when they sign up for this kind of thing.
Fay did ride-alongs. She participated in firearms training. She got hands-on exposure to equipment used by the detective unit, the kind of gear that rarely leaves the back of a precinct unless you work there. Every week, she wrote reflections documenting what she’d seen and what she’d taken from it. That’s a structured program, not an afterthought.
“We strongly believe in the importance of building trust and transparency between our district and the community, and our youth internship program helps us work toward that goal,” said Port Washington Police Department Chairman Sean McCarthy. “Makenna showed tremendous growth and interest throughout her time with us. We hope her experience was as rewarding for her as it was for us, and we look forward to seeing her build on the skills she learned as she continues her education.”
McCarthy’s point about trust isn’t just boilerplate. Community-police relations on Long Island have had their rough patches, and programs that put young people inside the workings of a department before they have any reason to distrust it can shape attitudes in ways that no press release ever will. You spend a November morning riding with an officer through Port Washington, and suddenly the uniform isn’t an abstraction.
Sgt. Peter Griffith, who spoke about Fay’s performance, was direct. “Our internship program is unique in that it provides participants with exposure to real police work and the training necessary to pursue a career in law enforcement,” Griffith said. “Makenna excelled throughout the program, and we look forward to watching her grow as part of the next generation of law enforcement professionals.”
The Port Washington Police District operates as an independent special district in Nassau County, separate from the Nassau County Police Department. It covers the Port Washington peninsula and has its own board structure, which is how you end up with a chairman rather than a chief at the top of the organizational chart. Small district, specific community. The kind of setup where a program like this can actually get traction because it doesn’t have to fight through layers of county bureaucracy to happen.
Fay is entering her senior year at St. Mary’s, which means she’s got college decisions ahead and, presumably, some clarity now about whether law enforcement belongs in that picture. Five months of real exposure tends to produce that clarity faster than any career aptitude survey.
The original reporting on the program’s conclusion came from the Long Island Press.
The district is now accepting applications for its next internship cycle. Interested candidates can call 516-883-0500 or email question@pwpd.ny.gov.
Worth noting for parents in Nassau County: programs like this one don’t advertise heavily. They fill by word of mouth, through school counselors, through the occasional newspaper item. If you’ve got a kid with any interest in law enforcement, criminal justice, or just a curiosity about how local government actually operates on the ground level, this is the kind of opportunity that tends to disappear fast once word gets out.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics tracks long-term trends in law enforcement recruitment, and the numbers have shown consistent strain on pipelines for new officers nationally. Whether programs like Port Washington’s move the needle on that larger problem is a separate question. But for one student from a Nassau County high school, five months of ride-alongs and firearms training did something a classroom rarely does.
It made the job real.