AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- Austin City Council members will vote Thursday on whether to move ahead in reinstating the Austin Police Department's cadet academy.
The city has been working with Kroll Associates since November 2020 to review and evaluate the department's training academy curriculum, and Kroll developed a list of recommendations and goals for the department's future training academies. Tuesday afternoon, council members will receive a briefing on the progress that's been made towards those goals.
According to Mark Ehlers, managing director of Kroll, the adjusted curriculum will shift away from a "warrior" mentality to more of a "guardian" one - mainly by reducing, but not eliminating, training time spent on crisis scenarios like school shootings.
The "reimagined" cadet classes come at a critical time for APD, which has seen its ranks shrink due to retirements and resignations with no new officers ready to fill the holes. Officials say more than 100 officers have left the force in the past few months.
Among the changes recommended by Kroll, the 34-week program will now feature 30 additional hours of community engagement and "lived experiences" programming. An 8-hour course on the "history of police and race in America" will also be added to the curriculum.
