Colorado police academies undergo first curriculum redesign in 40 years
PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) -- A major redesign is coming to police academies across Colorado. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has announced a plan to overhaul the police training curriculum.
The project has been in the works for a while now, with the Attorney General's office and police departments around the state working together to figure out what is needed.
"We are going to redesign the police training curriculum for the first time in 40 years," said Attorney General Phil Weiser. "As we do so, the input of law enforcement academies, starting with those in southern Colorado, is important to us because we need to make sure we're listening on the ground. What are academies looking for?"
One of the main focuses of this overhaul is to help cadets develop more emotional awareness.
"That means when you're exposed to trauma in one situation, before jumping right into another situation, you have the presence of mind to say, 'You know what, I'm not in a good position right now to go into another incident,'" said Weiser. "You also are more aware of how other people's mental state may trigger you, and you can avoid escalating situations by recognizing that some other person is in a traumatic experience, and how you can try to calm that situation, rather than escalating."
"There is a mental toll that it takes on officers out on the street because officers are exposed to trauma, they're exposed to situations that really affect our emotional wellness and our emotional health," said Captain Zachary Ballas, who is in charge of police training at the Pueblo Police Department. "At least at the Pueblo Police Department, we've identified this several years ago. In our academy, we dedicate a lot of hours. We do 34 hours of wellness training, we do resiliency training, and then we also do stress and trauma, and emotional survival training."
Reality-based training is also top of the list for the redesign. That’s when role-playing with actors is used to make training scenarios as realistic as possible.
"In my experience, one one of the things that really kind of sets officers apart is the amount of reality-based training that they go through in the academy," said Capt. Ballas. "It is apparent to me, the more reality-based training that we can do, the better they're able to perform under the stress that they encounter when they're out on the street."
The AG's office says one of the strengths of this plan is to eventually roll out a basic standard for academies, but they will also let departments develop their own curriculum that best suits their communities and resources.
"It is not going to be easy because we're starting from first principles, so we may be looking at a four-year runway to build and implement the curriculum and train the instructors," said Weiser. "At the end, however, is going to be a great benefit of first-class curriculum that will elevate law enforcement throughout the whole state."
In March, the Pueblo Police Academy fell out of compliance with the state for using non-approved maneuvers when teaching how to make an arrest.
Capt. Ballas says this new plan should prevent something like that from happening again.
"One of the reasons that the department went out of compliance, in effect, was that our arrest control was trying to push a more modernized version of what they were doing," said Capt. Ballas. "And in conversations with Colorado Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) and the Attorneys General Office about how the POST is going to help different academies change things, I think there would be effective communication and an ability to see the need to change, and then work with POST to effect that change."
