CONWAY — The new Central Arkansas Police Academy, a joint effort between the Conway and North Little Rock police departments, was created in response to officers wanting smaller — and closer — classes for training.
The 16-week academy will start Jan. 25 at the Conway Police Department and later switch to the North Little Rock department.
Previously, officers have had to go to Camden or Pocahontas for certification.
Interim Conway Police Chief Jody Spradlin said the impetus for the academy started with former chief A.J. Gary, who talked with North Little Rock Chief Mike Davis about the idea.
“They’ve been talking about this, trying to get this more centrally located. Camden is a long way. Driving every weekend — it’s just a long drive,” Spradlin said.
“Our agencies are pretty similar in many ways, as far as policies and procedures. We’ve always worked well with [North Little Rock]. We talk a lot: ‘What are you doing about this? What are you doing about that?’” he said.
Spradlin said the timing was right for a new academy.
“It just worked out perfectly that we had enough for a class,” he said.
Conway has hired 10 additional officers; North Little Rock has 10 new officers who started last week, Davis said.
Spradlin said Maj. Larry Hearn, who is support division commander over the training section at the Conway Police Department, will be the unofficial director of the academy.
Hearn said Conway officers sat down with Davis four or five months ago and discussed the idea.
“We all agreed that with the amount of new hires, we could put together a pretty good program,” Hearn said.
“We’re trying to limit our class sizes to less than 25,” he said.
The classes in Camden have grown, Hearn said, and often have 100-plus officers to one instructor.
Hearn went to Camden about 24 years ago to get certified; the academy was eight weeks then and is now 13 weeks.
Davis, who has been with the North Little Rock department for almost 30 years and chief for three, said his officers have gone to Pocahontas or Camden.
“Those are pretty good distances, and both of those are getting busier with more and more people going through them,” he said. “We just kind of thought we could be more intense and have more one-on-one training at our academy.”
“When we get a rookie back from Camden, we put them through what we call rookie training,” Spradlin said. The additional classes include
Taser training and how to run the DataMaster breath-test machine.
“It’s going to be run very similar to what they do at Camden,” Spradlin said.
The Conway and North Little Rock departments are footing the bill for the supplies, such as ammunition, and instructors, Hearn said
Hearn also said the departments have certified instructors in the areas needed.
“We’ve got a strong pool of subject-matter experts,” he said.
For example, he is a certified firearms instructor, and Maj. Laura Taylor in the Conway department “is a bar-certified attorney, teaching constitutional law,” he said.
He said a large training room with an interactive white board will be used at the Conway Police Department, and Conway’s firing range will be utilized.
Davis said he has secured the North Little Rock airport for the driving instruction, and Hearn said Conway will take some of its police Tahoes for the training and provide four emergency-vehicle-operations instructors.
The active-shooter training will probably be conducted in a former school building in North Little Rock, Hearn said.
Spradlin, Hearn and Davis said the smaller class sizes will be an advantage in the hands-on training, especially.
Davis said the training will help the officers “build relationships.”
“In the last 1 1/2 years, things have changed with the climate across the country,” he said. “We’re just trying to do a better job about being in the community. Conway and North Little Rock are similar in a lot of ways. They’ve got the same opportunities out in the community. I think it’s really going to be a community-policing revival, so to speak.”
The men said the Arkansas Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training gave its blessing to the academy and its curriculum.
“I think they realize we need something more centrally located,” Davis said.
Hearn said both police chiefs have stayed in close communication with Jami Cook, state director of law enforcement standards.
“She was very, very open to this and glad,” Hearn said.
Hearn said it took “a whole lot of work by a whole lot of people” to get the academy established.
“We had to address a lot of logistics,” he said.
All three men said the academy might eventually expand.
“If this does well, we may be able to open it up to other jurisdictions,” Hearn said. “We’re going to evaluate it, and look at it and see how it goes. We’re going to really, really do some hard-core self-assessment and look at the long term.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.