Graduates of the Calgary Police Service's first-ever accelerated class are bringing years of experience from their home countries to help police the city.

Fourteen recruits — a dozen from the U.K., one from South Africa and one from the RCMP — graduated from a 10-week course for experienced officers at a ceremony on Thursday.

"These are very experienced police officers. They have already a high level of knowledge, a high level of education," Calgary police Chief Rick Hanson said.

"What they needed was to be introduced to Canadian law and particularly in the Calgary context, bylaws, provincial statutes, those types of things, our policies and procedures."

Hanson said he was impressed with the different approaches the officers brought to the problem of drugs and gangs in the city.

"It's like any job, the more experience you get, the better you are," said the chief. "So when you can bring people in who have had that experience and … challenges from their particular environment before, I think it's nothing but beneficial, because it's all about sharing knowledge and sharing skills."

Const. Robert Brown said when he became a police officer in Northern Ireland, he dealt with a lot of terrorism-related cases.

"Things have really changed over the last 10-15 years in Northern Ireland. They've sort of moved into the community-based policing and Calgary is really a community-based policing area as well," he said.

"So we're hoping that we can bring some of our experiences from there and learn so much from the people of Calgary, and I think the police officers of Calgary as well."

Most of the graduates had no problem singing along to God Save the Queen at the ceremony, but the Canadian anthem was another story.

"We are getting there slowly, yes," said Brown. "Most of the guys aren't getting O Canada yet but we did have one Canadian in our class and I think we were kind of hoping he would sort of sing loud enough for all of us to look good."