NORWICH — A regional law enforcement council hopes to open a new satellite police recruit training academy in Norwich by early next year to address recent commuting and chronic attendance slot issues.
The Law Enforcement Council of Connecticut is in the process of creating policies and garnering approval from the state’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council, or POST-C, to open a training academy at the council’s 11 Stott Ave. offices by January.
The council, which operates out of the same building that serves as home to Hartford HealthCare‘s Eastern Region System Support offices, is a non-profit group made up of police chiefs from more than a dozen departments in Eastern Connecticut. Council President and Norwich Police Department Chief Patrick Daley said the group has been discussing the academy proposal for nearly two years.
“It was tougher and tougher to get spots at the Connecticut Police Academy in Meriden and we thought this type of training was something we could do on our own,” he said on Wednesday. “We asked our new executive director (Wilfred Blanchette III) to investigate the idea and he said it could be done.”
Blanchette said there’s “still a lot to do” to satisfy POST-C requirements.
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“But we’re working with them and they’re working with us,” he said. “We also still need the blessing of Hartford HealthCare which has been a great host to us. The goal is to have the best facility to train our recruits.”
For decades, local police departments have sent new recruits to either Meriden or a satellite training facility in one of the state’s larger cities, such as Hartford, New Haven or New Britain. Recruits heading to Meriden would spend their weekdays living in barracks at the training site and travel home on weekends for the duration of the 28-week class cycle.
But the COVID-19 pandemic led the academy to eliminate the barracks model and instead required recruits to travel back and forth for training five days a week to Meriden where the bulk of officers get trained.
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For a Plainfield police recruit, that translates to about 2 ½ hours worth of roundtrip driving every weekday, Chief Mario Arriaga said.
“Our department is the furthest away from Meriden, so when you add in the class time, you’re talking 13-hour days with recruits hitting the road at 5 a.m. and not getting home until 6 p.m.,” he said.
East Lyme police Chief Michael Finkelstein said the mileage racked up by traveling recruits is ultimately reimbursed by the sending department.
“We have a recruit, one of two we sent to Meriden last year, who lives in Plainfield, so we were paying her mileage during her time commuting,” he said. “And mileage is a huge piece for a department that can easily lead to an overtime situation.”
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Daley said the Norwich academy proposal calls for certified instructors from Eastern Connecticut departments to teach the classroom portions of the classes, from search-and-seizure topics to those involving active shooter scenarios.
“That was a worry at first, making sure we had the qualified officers here to run those classes, but it turned out that wasn’t an issue,” Daley said. “We would operate the satellite academy under the same POST-C guidelines and standards as in Meriden or any of the other academies.”
For non-classroom instruction – firearms training, physical agility tests – Arriaga said the council has the resources of 19 towns to drawn on.
“For instance, we could use Plainfield High School for an agility test, just like we do when we have a pre-hiring test,” he said. “We don’t have to build a building to make this happen.”
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Local chiefs listed the same advantages to opening a Norwich training academy: shorter commutes for recruits, the opportunity for hyper-local networking and freeing up space at the Meriden location.
“These recruits will be training with officers they’re going to be seeing throughout their careers here as they go through the ranks – I’m still friends with those officers I went through the academy with 28 years ago,” Daley said. “It will also free up around 30 spots that Meriden won’t have to find room for.”
Daley said he expects starting with one training class a year consisting of between 20-30 recruits. He said the proposal doesn’t prevent departments from still sending their people to Meriden or an alternate satellite training facility.
The council is also exploring holding longer class days with the goal of graduating classes about a month sooner than Meriden.
“That means getting those new officers into their departments with a training officer sooner and out on the road quicker,” Arriaga said. “We’ll still have to pay about $3,700 per recruit like we do now, but we’re saving in fuel costs and time. Recruits here will still have to commute, but for 20 minutes each way instead of more than an hour.”
John Penney can be reached at jpenney@norwichbulletin.com or at (860) 857-6965.
