Craven Community College (Craven CC) will host a training session to provide enhanced professional development to the state’s law enforcement officers. The event will be held in the Advanced Manufacturing Center on the college’s New Bern campus on Aug. 3 – 4.
The goal of this training is to serve North Carolina’s law enforcement agencies by extending additional instruction on implicit bias, impartial policing and collaborative community engagement. The instructor training is provided by the International Academy of Public Safety and the initiative is managed by Wake Tech on behalf of the State Board of Community Colleges and the NC Community College System Office.
Forty-five law enforcement instructors from 21 community colleges participated in the first “Impartial Policing” event, which was held July 13 – 14 at Wake Tech’s Public Safety Education Campus in Raleigh.
Approximately 35 instructors are expected to take part in the training at Craven CC and they will then share this standardized “Impartial Policing” content with police departments and sheriff’s offices at no cost to the officers. Other regional instructor-training sessions will be held in August at Randolph Community College in Asheboro and Western Piedmont Community College in Morganton.
The initiative was made possible by the State Board of Community Colleges, which approved $100,000 in reserve funding in June.
Requirements for Basic Law Enforcement Training and annual in-service training for North Carolina’s law enforcement agencies are set by the North Carolina Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission and the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Education and Training Standards Commission. The state’s community colleges are approved to provide this training across the state and also partner with local police departments and sheriffs’ offices to provide additional instruction to meet identified local needs.
The program will begin at 8 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 3, with a welcome message from Dr. Ray Staats, Craven CC president.
By Gery Boucher, Vice President for Students, Craven Community College