A Vancouver police car pictured on March 14, 2019, in Vancouver, Wash.
Bryan M. Vance / OPB
Law enforcement in Southwest Washington have said they are shorthanded and hungry for recruits. Now, a training center in their own backyard is slated to open in less than three months.
Details aren’t yet ironclad, such as where exactly the recruits will be training, and officials have yet to lock-in an opening date, said Clark County Sheriff John Horch.
“I’m confident it will be in January,” the sheriff said. He said state officials are “finalizing the location. They’ve selected people to run the academy. They’ve been working on it.”
Washington state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission, also known as WSCJTC, is leading the effort to build regional academies, a move designed to cut down waitlists for recruits to be trained and certified as official police.
Lawmakers in the spring agreed to pay $2 million toward establishing one center in Clark County. One satellite center has already opened in Pasco County. Skagit County is also slated to get one.
For years, law enforcement agencies have griped that recruits had to travel – sometimes hundreds of miles – to get basic training. The current training center is located in Burien, Washington. For prospects in the southern part of the state, that often meant spending many nights in a hotel room.
That distance also made it more difficult for recruiters to pitch local men and women to join, Horch said.
“It helps local people who don’t want to be gone from their families for five nights a week,” he told OPB this week.
There have been some behind-the-scenes musical chairs occurring with the center as an opening date draws closer, according to local officials. Clark College had been an early choice to host classes at its Columbia Tech Center, but that has fallen through.
College spokesperson Maureen Hefflin said in an email that the college was recently “informed that we are not one of the finalists for their location.”
Hefflin said missing the shortlist was not a setback. A campus building that might have been used to train police already houses the college’s mechatronics program and several other classes. She said there are “other interested parties” aiming to use the center.
It’s unclear exactly where the police facility location will be with Clark College out of the running. Representatives of the Criminal Justice Training Commission said negotiations are currently being handled by another state agency: The Department of Enterprise Services. That agency did not respond to requests for comment.
Training commission spokesperson Megan Saunders said the commission “awaits news from DES that negotiations have successfully closed with signed contracts.”
“While negotiations are ongoing, WSCJTC is required to trust the process and not interfere,” Saunders added.
Still, local officials are preparing for classes to start on time. Horch said two Vancouver Police Department officers and one employee from the sheriff’s office will be helping plan.
Thirty trainees will be in attendance for the first classes, Horch said. Not all of them will be from Southwest Washington, but some will. For example, the Vancouver Police Department, which is the region’s largest police agency, has four recruits currently awaiting training.
“The classes are going to go whether we can provide 30 (recruits) here or not,” he said.
Regardless of where the training center opens, it will be temporary. Horch noted that the “ultimate goal” is to build a new facility from scratch. But that would be years away.