45 Northwestern Wisconsin Police Officers now have stronger skills to investigate death scenes.

If they'd had to learn it on the job it could have taken years for these officers to get this training.

Every year the Wisconsin Department of Justice holds a two week death investigation school in Green Lake, Wisconsin. It's a popular program.

The agency gets 130 law enforcement applicants for only 42 classroom spots.

"So we've created quite a large waiting list to get into the school," said Special Agent James Holmes, with the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Criminal Investigation Division.

"The green lake training school is a long way away for a lot of these agencies and they simply don't have the logistical ability to get officers down to the green lake school," said Steve Page, Law Enforcement Training Specialist for Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College in Rice Like.

That's why the Department of Justice decided to take the school to the officers.

Page united with the Wisconsin Department of Justice, to develop a shorter program, that's easier for officers to get to.

In the two week course officers get the opportunity to investigate a number of mock death scenes.

Now there's not enough time for that in only three days, but officers do learn everything from blood stain pattern analysis to forensic pathology.

To make sure that when they go to a death scene that they have knowledge that will help them in getting through the investigation."

Both Page and the Justice Department hope to continue this abbreviated death investigation school on an annual basis.

Page says the officers who attended the 3 day school, had nothing but good things to say about the training.