darksim905 wrote:MBI wrote:There definitely is come interesting training available to civilians out there.
If you have a few thousand bucks burning a hole in your pocket, in many states you can also self-sponsor and attend the police academy even if you haven't been hired as a police officer. It won't give you police powers, but if you have a clean criminal record you can pay the tuition yourself to get the police training.
Really? I've never heard of this. Hmm, this piques my interest quite a bit. Have you ever heard of anyone successfully doing this?
Happens all the time, I've run across dozens, if not hundreds of guys who have done this in my area.
Many who self-sponsor are wannabee cops who have applied repeatedly to local agencies and keep getting rejected. They have aspirations of becoming a police officer so they self-sponsor in the hopes it'll make them a more marketable commodity when they apply the next time.
This is because under Civil Service regulations (which many agencies voluntarily follow in their hiring process) you automatically get a few "preference points" if you are already a graduate of the police academy. Just like you can get points for being a college graduate, speak a foreign language, are a resident of the jurisdiction where you're applying, etc.
That's not to say all guys who self-sponsor fall into that category, but in fairness, you ought to be warned that many people will assume that is the case if you self-sponsor. These cadets tend to be subtly looked down upon in the academy, at least until people get to know you and can see you're not a butt-head.
Whether or not people are allowed to self-sponsor just depends on the laws in each particular state. I'm located in Utah and the agency responsible for police training here is POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training). It should be easy to find out what the name of the agency is in your state and you can just call and ask them directly, or see if they have application information on their website. There can be some small costs involved, such as for fingerprinting, photos (passport type), and often a background check to show you have a clean criminal history. Or at least, clean
enough. Certain minor offenses are usually allowable.
Admission to the academy here is allocated on a first come-first served basis for police agencies who have new-hires whom they need to have trained and certified. POST then also maintains a separate waiting list of people who want to self-sponsor. Around here the classes tend to be booked solid but sometimes agencies have last minute cancellations. When that happens POST sends notifications to the first people on the waiting list so see if they still want to attend.
I believe they only do that a week or two before the class starts, so basically you have that long to quit your job (because the police academy is a full time thing and about 13 or 14 weeks long), cough up tuition money (I think it's around $6,000 if I remember right), buy your gear, cadet uniforms and whatnot. And even then, there is a chance you could get bumped from the class if an agency comes in at the last minute with a new-hire and they need that class spot. As I recall, as a self sponsored candidate your seat in the class was not guaranteed until the first day that your training session starts, then you were locked in and couldn't be bumped.
Anyways, that's what I can recall about the process. At least for Utah. If you wanted a short answer... oh well.