The world’s most prestigious law-enforcement training program last month graduated 250 top officers from every state and 21 foreign countries – including, for the second time in a year and a half, an official from Vicksburg.

Mississippi Highway Patrol Lt. and local resident Walter Armstrong spent 10 weeks at the FBI’s National Academy at the agency’s training academy in Quantico, Va., from Jan. 7 to March 17.

The program does not recruit its participants into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but is strictly a training program to send them back to their agencies with more education, tactical know-how and national contacts.

&#8220It’s very prestigious – less than half of 1 percent of officers in the world get the opportunity to take this training,” said Armstrong, 45, a Batesville native who lives in Vicksburg but works at the Highway Patrol’s Jackson office. &#8220All of us are veteran officers. Some people wait as long as seven to 10 years to get into the National Academy. I was fortunate enough to get in within a year form the time I applied, but there were other students there who had waited a long time to get into the training because it is very prestigious and each state only gets so many slots.”

The 22-year MHP veteran was sponsored by retired Highway Patrol Col. Marvin Curtis, his longtime colleague and a graduate of the National Academy himself who also once lived in Vicksburg.

&#8220I told him it would be a big step in his career,” said Curtis, who went through the academy in 1996. &#8220Walter and I have worked together in one form or another since he’s been with the force…He’s been very good for the Highway Patrol.”

Armstrong said he was inspired by several other local officials who had gone through the National Academy training, including Curtis and Vicksburg Police Chief Tommy Moffett. Others included former police chief Mitchell Dent and Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace, who completed the program in 2004, shortly before Armstrong decided to submit his application, and recommended the training.

&#8220We sat down a couple of times and talked about the curriculum and some of the classes he could take, as well as some of the things in the area he could take advantage of,” Pace said. &#8220Walter and I have been friends for years. I’m very proud of him.”

More than 39,000 law enforcement officers have completed the academy since it began in 1935, according to the FBI. Nearly 23,000 graduates are still active in their agencies. Nearly all of them, including Armstrong, boast the trophy for completing the 6.1-mile &#8220yellow brick road” run and obstacle course.

The majority of the work, however, is more cerebral. Whereas highway patrol training emphasizes the physical aspects of the trade, Armstrong said the FBI puts on more of a college-style program whose participants live on campus – the U.S. Marine Corps Base, home of the FBI Academy – are paired with out-of-state roommates and enroll in classes. Armstrong signed up for 260 classroom hours from top instructors in public speaking; gangs and criminal behavior; legal issues; fitness; introduction to microcomputers and, most interesting to him, computer crimes. In that class, he said, the &#8220students” learned, among other tricks, methods for tracking down the origins of e-mail from a member of the Wichita, Kan., Police Department, which used markers on electronic messages to arrest Dennis Rader, the notorious BTK serial killer, in 2005.

&#8220When someone sends you an e-mail there are numbers on there known as headers, and we were taught how to trace those numbers back to the computer that sent the e-mail,” he said. &#8220We also talked about how pedophiles communicate with kids by way of computers, and how they lure them to meet them someplace.”

Ten weeks away from home and family – Armstrong and his wife have one son in Warren Central High School, another in medical school in Nashville and two out of school – can be trying, and Armstrong flew home for a weekend after about the sixth week, he said. But even the downtime, in one of the country’s most heavily guarded facilities, was often all business.

&#8220Weekends were always good for studying, doing homework, preparing for the following week,” he said. &#8220You’re working during the day 8 to 5, so it doesn’t give you a whole lot of time.”