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When Ron and Janet Lanning decided they wanted to spend more time together, they could have gone golfing or joined a bowling league.

Instead, for the past month the Lannings and about 45 other residents have been attending the Collier County Sheriff’s Office’s citizens academy, learning more about the inner-workings of the agency that helps keep their community safe. Ron Lanning, 69, already volunteers with the Sheriff’s Office, so Janet, 58, thought it would be nice to have a similar background.

“We wanted to share something and spend time together,” Janet Lanning said. “We thought this would be a great way to do it.”

The Sheriff’s Office holds six-week citizens academies two or three times a year, said Chief Jim Williams, who was on hand for Monday night’s presentation. The purpose of the academies is to give residents an inside look at the agency because, he said, law enforcement’s authority comes directly from the people.

“What I’d like them to take away is an understanding of the challenges that are being faced by law enforcement,” Williams said, “and an appreciation of the kind of professionalism and capability that we have here in their sheriff’s office, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.”

This academy, which is closed to new participants, is being held on Monday nights from 6-8:30 p.m. at the Professional Development Center, 615 Third Ave. N. On previous evenings participants learned about the Sheriff’s Office’s traffic and marine units, SWAT team, and got to test out the agency’s new Segway transporters and Sky Watch Sentinel, a personal observation tower.

On Monday night participants learned about the workings of an internal investigation, the agency’s six-point response to resistance matrix and watched as a German shepherd named Mick searched for drugs that had been planted in the room.

They also got a demonstration of a baton splitting a melon and watched as the electricity from a Taser stun gun danced across a metal-covered dummy.

Angela Newhouse, 31, of East Naples, volunteered to place her hand in a container of water that a deputy shocked with a Taser. The demonstration was done to prove that a Taser couldn’t kill somebody who was wet or in the water, Williams said.

“When your fingers go numb and you touch it and it feels kind of tingly, that’s what it felt like,” Newhouse said. “I’d say frostbite, but most people down here wouldn’t know what that feels like.”

In the back of the room 79-year-old Elaine D. Lyons took notes and petted Mick. Lyons, who used to volunteer in Immokalee, said she admires the work that deputies do working with immigrants in that community.

“I think more people in the community should know the responsible positions that our sheriff’s have,” she said. “They’re not just out cruising around looking for speeders.”