As of Tuesday morning, the Alachua Police Department (APD) officially has two trainers stationed at the Santa Fe College Institute of Public Safety (IPS) police academy. 

The training staff actually began helping with an academy class that started a week ago because of an existing relationship with the college, but an agreement accepted by the Alachua City Commission last night officially launched a co-location program. 

“We need the resources that the academy has to help us, to provide to us, and we want to be able to utilize those resources at the academy well,” said Alachua Police Chief Jesse Sandusky. “We want to be able to utilize the benefits that we’ll get from having our folks help teach those academy recruits and be a part of their learning law enforcement and learning how to be a police officer.” 

According to the agreement, APD will provide training personnel to serve on-site at the police academy full-time. They will liaise between the two organizations, coordinate and instruct in-service classes for APD personnel and sometimes other agencies, act as class coordinators for at least one police academy course per year, plus any advanced or specialized classes agreed upon, help teach other police academy classes and fulfill several other miscellaneous responsibilities to help the academy. 

In return, the college will provide the APD personnel with office space, access to a copier, storage space for weapons and ammunition, and training facilities for up to 300 block hours of in-service training per year. 

Until this agreement, APD did most of its training in-house, according to Sandusky. The city’s police department is mid-size, with about 38 sworn officers, and Sandusky said even though the force splits into groups to go through trainings, it is still a tight fit in the available facilities. 

APD has reserved rooms at the police academy for some of its trainings, which are required for officers to maintain their certifications, and for APD to maintain its accreditation. But until the agreement, the city has had to pay for the use of space at the police academy. 

Sandusky said for him, the most exciting part of the agreement is the growth it demonstrates. He said he started with APD in 2003, and though it had strong leaders, it was small. 

“We’ve become well-respected among the law enforcement agencies in our county… even though we’re still not considered a large law enforcement agency, we’d be considered medium size,” Sandusky said. “But to see that growth, and to see us evolve into something to where now we’re actually at the academy being able to train new recruits and come in, it’s neat to see, because it shows us the growth.” 

APD received accreditation from the Commission for Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation in 2022, certifying that the department maintains the highest standards of professionalism, and has maintained its standing since then. About half of Florida’s local law enforcement agencies are accredited.  

Sandusky said there have been talks for years of creating an agreement like this one, but APD did not yet have the resources to maintain a training unit at the academy full-time. It was a dream to join the “big dogs” of the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office and the Gainesville Police Department as permanent fixtures at the IPS police academy. 

A few APD employees also work at the academy as adjunct instructors, and eventually, Sandusky said those employees began saying it would be a good time to move toward an agreement. 

Sandusky said the twofold benefits of the agreement mean that APD not only gets to use the academy’s space for training at no additional cost, but the involvement with training the academy’s students will provide an opportunity for recruitment. 

According to Thomas Ackerman, director of the Institute of Public Safety, the academy’s graduates have had a 100% pass rate on the correctional officer state exam for the last six years, and the police academy graduates have had a 100% pass rate for the last five years. 

“I attribute some of that to these partnerships that we have had with [Alachua County Sheriff’s Office] and the Gainesville Police Department because we have current, active police officers in our building who share their expertise with our recruits, and it doesn’t get any better than that. So now we’re going to have a third partner, and it’ll get even better,” Ackerman said. 

The agreement between the IPS and APD is set to last until Jan. 31, 2030.