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HANNIBAL, MO. -- The Hannibal Police Department is about to revive a police cadet program and it could eventually be a springboard for those people who want to become a licensed police officers for the department.

In the state of Missouri, all police officers must go through post training and be licensed before they become a sworn police officer. POST stands for peace officer standards and training. But for many, they can't take the leap to go to the academy for several weeks without a regular paycheck. But now, the Hannibal Police Chief is reviving the old program.

"People who are in other careers that would like to change careers ... this would be a good way to bridge that gap. It would allow them to have income, we would pay for the training and as long as they didn't voluntarily leave in the next three years they would never have to pay that money back. Now if they would leave, they would owe some of the tuition back to us on a prorated basis," Chief Lyndell Davis said.

The idea is to pay the cadet a salary of $28,000 while they would be at the academy. Once they graduate and become a sworn officer that salary would jump to nearly $36,000. It's something that can put the Hannibal Police Department on the same playing field as other departments in Illinois and Iowa.

"I think it would just make us a more competitive agency ourself, it's good for the community to get the highest quality officer as we can and what a benefit it is for those applicants out there that are maybe graduating from college or getting out of the military after being deployed and have excellent skills, excellent training what a great asset for us to be able to draw from that pool of applicants," Davis said.

Davis hopes that with this program they'll be able to enlarge the pool of potential applicants from 50 to 60 to possibly over 100. He says it's a good thing to have too many candidates and he thinks it will continue to reflect on the department and the benefits they offer to employees.

The cadet program would accept applicants between the ages of 21 to 35 and who have passed all of the tests the department has on the local level before heading off to an academy.