Student and Parent Information : Lake Region State College

| Student and Parent Information : Lake Region State College

Summer peace officer training in Grand Forks

by Erin Wood and Kevin Dean

Posted on 10/12/2009

The Grand Forks Police Department and Devils Lake-based Lake Region State College will hold a news conference on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 to announce a partnership that will bring LRSC’s Peace Officer Training Program to Grand Forks. The news conference will take place at the Grand Forks Public Safety Center at 10:00 a.m. The center is located at 1220 S. 52^nd St. in the Grand Forks Industrial Park.

The Peace Officer Training Program is a one-semester basic police academy that results in license eligibility for program graduates. Unlike traditional college criminal justice programs, graduates of the 20-semester hour Peace Officer Training Program are immediately hirable by law enforcement agencies as the students have completed all necessary training to obtain a peace officer license in North Dakota.

LRSC began training police officers in 1987. Since that time, the college has produced more than 1,000 license-eligible graduates that have been hired by 116 different North Dakota law enforcement agencies.

A partnership similar to the one Grand Forks Police Department and LRSC are entering was created in Fargo, ND in 2002. “Eight straight summer academies in Fargo have produced almost 200 additional police officers and deputy sheriffs for North Dakota,” said Corry Kenner, Vice President of Administrative Services at LRSC.

The college will continue offering a summer academy in Fargo and will continue its spring and fall academies in Devils Lake.

“We are looking forward to this partnership and to hosting a North Dakota POST approved academy in our new training facility. This will have a dramatic impact on our ability to recruit the best police officers for the City of Grand Forks and at the same time provide additional officers to agencies all across ND,” said Grand Forks Police Chief John Packett.

The partnership with the Grand Forks Police Department is expected to graduate an additional 26 license eligible graduates each summer, bringing the total graduates trained by LRSC to almost 90 a year.

“This is exactly the type of program we envisioned when we first proposed building the Public Safety Center,” said Grand Forks Mayor Michael R. Brown. “Without this facility, this type of partnership would not have been possible.”

Grand Forks Council member Curt Kreun, who chairs the Service/Safety Committee that helped make the Public Safety Center a reality, says this is just the beginning of things to come. “We see the Public Safety Center as a regional resource where state-of-the-art facilities are available for other law enforcement, fire and emergency management training,” he said.

Instructors for the program include more than 40 law enforcement professionals from 16 law enforcement agencies, including members of police departments, sheriff’s departments, the N.D. Highway Patrol, the N.D. Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and the college’s two full time faculty members.

“The program has an almost 100 percent employment rate for graduates that actively pursue a position as a full-time police officer or deputy sheriff in North Dakota,” said LRSC Peace Officer Training Director Lloyd Halvorson.

Those interested in attending the academy this summer should contact the program’s director, Lloyd Halvorson for more information. Halvorson will be in Grand Forks for an informational meeting with UND’s Criminal Justice Club at 7:00 p.m. on Wed. October 21^st. The meeting will be held at the city’s Public Safety Center. Those interested are encouraged to attend.

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