| Napa Valley College was certified by the California
Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) in 1983.
It is one of 39 certified presenters in California offering basic and
advanced law enforcement training. Becoming a certified presenter
was not an easy process. Under the leadership of Ron Havner, the
first academy director, and Joe Threat, an active community member and
current chair of the Law Enforcement Advisory Committee, application for
certification was made to POST. The creation of a police academy in
Napa was strongly supported by local law enforcement executives and local
politicians. Basic Police Academy Class #1 was an extended format
academy that met for only four hours per day. An extended
format academy was offered in the morning and again in the evening.
Soon after, a full-time intensive format academy replaced the extended format academy offered in the morning. In 1986, a reserve police
academy program was created and offered during evening hours. This program was
332 hours long and offered
over the course of one semester, twice each year. It soon replaced
the evening extended format academy. In 1994, because of
changes in the law governing peace officer training, the reserve academy
was replaced by an evening extended format basic police academy
. In 1988, the California Department
of Fish and Game affiliated with the training center and began offering a
special format of the basic police academy especially for wardens.
This program was first known as the Resource Academy and was changed in
1999 to the Fish and Game Academy. Unfortunately, in 2003, the
State of California eliminated the program due to a budget
crisis. The Fish and Game Academy was
replaced with a corrections training program to serve local jails, probation
departments, and juvenile hall facilities. Curriculum development
began in 2004, but again because of budget constraints, the program was not
completed. In the fall of 2005, the training center was selected as
one of three centers to receive a grant from the California Department of
Corrections and California Community College Chancellor's Office to develop
a pilot academy for state correctional officers. The first pilot
academy graduated in December 2006. The first adult corrections core
course for local correctional officers will be offered in September 2007.
In the fall of 2007, a full time coordinator was hired to manage the growing
corrections program and our already established in-service training program.
Starting in the fall of 2008, the training center will present all three
basic training programs for local corrections agencies.
On January 7, 2006, with the start of our
62nd Basic Police Academy class, we launched the single largest and most
significant change in the curriculum of the basic police academy in more
than 20 years. The changes include use of online testing in place of
pencil and paper tests, a new curriculum that infuses the concepts of
leadership, ethics, and community policing into every area of training.
We began a new competency based performance evaluation system and portfolio
project.
Competency based evaluation was taken to its final level starting in January
2008 with the implementation of competency based graduation standards that
are tied directly to our 6 student learning outcomes. Students are now
required to achieve an overall average score of at least 80% in each of the
six core dimensions in the academy. These graduation requirements are
among the highest in the state. Today,
the Criminal Justice Training Center presents four basic police academy
classes each year including tthree intensive format classes and one evening
extended format class. In addition, the training center offers a dozen different
specialized advanced and instructor level courses as well as in-service
training for local law enforcement agencies.
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