Sauk Valley Police Academy Will Center Around Community Policing

By Brandon Clark

Sauk Valley Community College became the site for Illinois' newest police academy earlier this year. While some academies take a quasi-military structure and approach, Sauk's model will center around community policing, procedural justice, and building relationships within the community – a key element in the state board’s decision.

Some classic elements of structure and discipline will have their place, but the academy's director, Jason LaMendola, believes that it is critical for officers to develop a personal relationship with the communities they serve.

"My vision is to have an academy centered around community policing and procedural justice. That is my hope and what I will be looking for in my instructors," Director LaMendola said. "Setting in place the standard curriculum is the easy part. Then, after that, it's infusing these ideas of de-escalation and procedural justice into their outlines, classes, and training scenarios that I really want to get across to these instructors."

Director LaMendola served in the Dixon Police department for nearly 26 years as a Sergeant and was a Special Weapons and Tactics team leader for multi-jurisdictional teams, taught department defensive and survival tactics, and managed the active shooter response program ALICE to local schools and businesses. He believes procedural justice and community policing are the bridges between officers and citizens.

"Procedural justice is how you treat people to build and maintain trust. For example, suppose an officer is rude and does not let someone ask questions or refuses to answer any of their questions. In that case, people begin not to trust that officer, the process, or police in general," Director LaMendola said.

Procedural justice is about transparency. It allows citizens to explain their actions and guides officers on how to best explain the reasoning and legal bases for their response to those actions.

“I think one of the best things the academy will do is build great communicators. While officers have all these tools at their disposal, it is communication that builds trust, takes control of a situation, and helps make citizens a part of the process, too," Vice President of Academics and Student Services Dr. Jon Mandrell said. "We will focus a lot on building bridges with our community and showing them that officers can be great people and public servants that are here to help you."

The college took a strong interest in developing the academy in response to local and state police departments' concerns over lengthy wait times to replace retiring officers. It is the model in Illinois for a department first to hire an officer and then send them to a police academy for 14 weeks of training.

There are seven other academies in Illinois, most with a waiting list of up to a year. This dilemma led to officers retiring faster than departments could replace them. Sauk hopes to help mitigate that imbalance.

“There was a dire need in our region to have a training site to be able to get new officers on the street in a timely manner,” Dr. Mandrell said. “It started within the Sauk Valley region, but it was a state-wide issue, and it grew to us being able to put ourselves in a position to be approved as the eighth academy in the state."

The academy will have its first class in January 2023, and cadets will spend 14 weeks and roughly 560 hours training for their new careers. Next year, the Illinois State Board of Law Enforcement will increase that time to 16 weeks. In addition, the increase will expand training hours for crisis intervention, procedural justice, and other de-escalation techniques.