East Lansing police officers will be leaving on a jet plane - for the Ukraine.

As part of Project Harmony’s Community Connections program, officers Marc Smith and James Campbell will be leaving Feb. 3 to visit with Ukrainian police.

They will return Feb. 18.

The program allows visitors to travel abroad on three- to five-week stays for training opportunities.

Early last year, 12 Ukrainian officers visited East Lansing. East Lansing is sending two of their own to follow up on the program.

The officers will be staying with the families of police officers and instructing the departments about community policing.

Community policing involves police officers entering a sector of the community and being visible and available to residents.

Some of the topics to be discussed with the officers will be interaction with communities, programs that involve children and community holiday parties.

“As it stands now, they use a military style of policing as opposed to interacting with the community,” Smith said.

The two officers will be joined on the trip with two others from Traverse City.

Smith said he hopes the experience will give them some ideas of their own on how to deal with drugs and alcohol in schools.

When the Ukrainian officers visited East Lansing, they were very interested in how the department interacts with school officials and students, he said.

The department works with East Lansing Schools in programs such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education and Students Against Drunk Driving.

“Once they implement programs that are good for them, they will be better off,” Smith said.

The trip also will be a great opportunity to address topics and issues the officers have, Campbell said.

“Hopefully they will have the ideas that they want to discuss,” he said. “We just want to give them the help to lay the ground work.”

East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton said he thinks the opportunity speaks well of the police department.

“It reflects positively not only of the whole department but on those two individuals,” he said.

East Lansing City Council member and former officer Bill Sharp said community policing is an important factor.

While East Lansing was not as large as it was when Sharp served on the force, there was an officer who was appointed at the school in the early `60s, he said.

But Sharp said he feels that regardless of how the trip unfolds, the opportunity is an honor for the department.

“I think it speaks very highly of them,” Sharp said. “Apparently the people that came over here were very impressed.”