Cape police academy set to break new ground

BOURNE — The Cape Cod Municipal Police Academy will not welcome its first incoming class until next month, but by all indications it is already a success.

The new academy, located on Joint Base Cape Cod, is filled to capacity, with 45 recruits scheduled to attend its first 20-week session beginning July 8.

The academy, which will operate as a department of Barnstable County, is led by retired Yarmouth Police Chief Peter Carnes, who also formerly served as police chief and director of campus safety at Stonehill College. Former Shrewsbury Police Chief Wayne Sampson, who formerly served as executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, serves as the academy’s deputy director.

“The Cape is starting to fall behind on the number of public safety positions being filled by qualified candidates,” Barnstable County Administrator John “Jack” Yunits Jr. said. “This is an affordable way of filling those positions quickly.”

The Barnstable County regional government has allocated $50,000 for the academy’s startup costs, while state Rep. Timothy Whelan, R-Brewster, has successfully secured a $50,000 amendment in the House budget for the fledgling academy.

Since the late 1980s, Cape and Islands police recruits have traveled off-Cape, some as far away as Western Massachusetts, for training. That left local municipalities to absorb recruit expenses such as travel, lodging and meals in addition to tuition.

Tuition to attend the Cape Cod Municipal Police Academy is $3,900 per student.

“This will save our communities a tremendous amount of money,” Sampson said.

Of the 45 recruits in the academy’s inaugural class, 22 hail from the Cape and Islands, while 23 are from Southeastern Massachusetts, according to Carnes. He added that local recruits are given first priority for enrollment before out-of-region students are considered.

The academy’s first class is 20% women, which academy leaders say is a promising sign.

“This is very encouraging,” Carnes said. “We need more women in this profession, and we need more women in (high) rank in this profession.”

The recruits were together last week at Bourne High School for a physical fitness test that included a 1.5-mile run, 300-meter sprint, pushups and situps.

The academy received its approval from the Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee in February. Several months later, it is ready to open its doors, a feat largely accomplished through use of existing facilities at the base.

“It’s a testament to the excellence of Chief Carnes and Chief Sampson and the excellent work they did to collaborate with the county (and base),” Whelan said about the swiftness of the academy’s opening process. “They are outstanding.”

“We are looking forward to the start of the academy,” Provincetown Police Chief James Golden said. “We will have two student officers in the class and it will allow us to get them trained and online more efficiently.”

A challenge for Provincetown, Golden says, has been limited capacity at the four state-run academies, which accommodate recruits on a first-come, first-served basis.

Larger municipalities often take most of the seats, Golden said. 

Golden said he tried last fall to enroll a recruit at the Plymouth Police Academy, the closest to the Cape, only to be told it was full, but that there was a seat available in Springfield.

The new academy is the first in the state to offer every training discipline in one location. Those include classroom instruction, physical fitness, emergency vehicle operations, a firing range and swimming.

In addition to police often being the first responders to incidents requiring water rescue, swimming is an important facet to the training program, since most of the recruits are from coastal communities, according to Sampson.

“This is a new paradigm, having everything centralized and located at one site,” said Whelan. “They (state officials) are going to be watching this very closely. We understand the success of this academy could contribute to the training thought process in the future.”

Negotiations are also underway to relocate the Barnstable County Fire and Rescue Training Academy to Joint Base Cape Cod.

The second session of the new police academy will likely start in early 2020. That class is also expected to fill quickly, Sampson said.

“We anticipate the next class will be filled exclusively with Cape and Islands recruits and civil service hires from Barnstable, Bourne, Falmouth and Sandwich,” he said.