INDEPENDENCE — Northern Kentucky is one of the most populous regions in the Commonwealth, with roughly two dozen law enforcement agencies within Boone, Campbell and Kenton Counties. Yet, there is no local academy to train its police officers.
Regional leaders are looking to change that.
Independence City Council unanimously passed on Monday a resolution in support of establishing a Northern Kentucky branch of Kentucky's Department of Criminal Justice Training Police Academy.
"We have the population to support it, I'm sure. This is something that we feel very strongly about," said Independence Mayor Chris Reinersman who advocated for the resolution before handing it over for a vote.
His council has now joined neighboring cities in expressing support for a local academy, including Fort Wright, Park Hills. Fort Mitchell and Covington, the latter two of which passed their own resolutions recently.
Covington's Board of Commissioners approved theirs at an October meeting.
Kentucky State Police has its own training academy. As for municipal agencies, Lexington, Louisville and Bowling Green are the only city departments with their own.
All other agencies must send their recruits to the state's Criminal Justice Training Police Academy located south of Lexington in Richmond.
"One of the problems we recognized was it was so hard to get people into the academy (since COVID-19)," Reinersman said. "We used to be able to hire somebody and be able to have them in the academy within a month."
Since the pandemic, there's been a drop-off in recruitment nationwide.
While his police department is among the luckier ones — there are four vacancies, with four lateral transfers pending — Reinersman said he knows that's not the case across the region.
With fewer willing applicants, it's taking longer for local departments to make hires. Once they do, the waiting only continues.
Training at the police academy lasts six months, and with the lingering backlog from the pandemic pushing earliest admittance dates to late May, successful recruits wouldn't leave the academy until November. Then they must undergo field training within their local department. That lasts another 16-20 weeks.
That means if someone were to be hired now, they wouldn't be sworn in as a police officer and patrolling on their own until February 2025 at the earliest.
"And that's not sustainable," Reinersman said.
Fort Mitchell Police Chief Robert Nader said his department only has one vacancy and already has four applicants vying to fill it, but unlike as with Independence PD, two of those hopefuls would be first-time officers. If Nader hired one of them, he too would have to wait more than a year before his new officer hit the road.
Nader said he's also in support of a local academy.
The passed resolutions are being shared with local legislators and the state's Department of Criminal Justice for consideration. Reinersman said while a regional training facility wouldn't fix recruiting issues, he's hopeful it can help cut down on wait times and expedite the training process.
"We don't want the state to put us in a position where we become so desperate where you start to think those requirements," said Reinersman.
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