By Mike Finney

DOVER — Dover Police Chief Thomas Johnson said he “wants and needs” the chance for his department to continue to conduct its own police academy.

While it appears as if members of Dover City Council would love to give him permission to pursue his goal of continuing to have a police academy after successfully training 17 recruits last fall, it also has to make sure the numbers add up to make it an affordable and feasible option for the city.

The Dover Police Department provided some financial reports from the police academy class that trained last fall, but Assistant City Manager Matt Harline and the city’s Finance Department Controller/Treasurer Lori Peddicord noted they were incomplete and didn’t present a completely clear picture.

That’s why city council members unanimously passed a motion at last week’s virtual meeting to table the matter of moving forward a Dover Police Academy class that is prepared to begin training in April and bring it back for further review at Monday night’s council meeting, pending further information from the police department.

“I think we have excellent police officers who do excellent police work,” Mr. Harline said. “The initial numbers that we got from the police department, as I tried to gently say at (a previous meeting), had some holes in it and some assumptions and some errors in the way they did the accounting.

“(They were) minor things that Ms. Pettitcord – or myself – could have caught. I think that’s why it’s very important that we discuss this and look at that.”

He said the net cost of the fall Dover Police Academy was around $9,600, which included both capital and operational costs and “they are not well separated.”

“I think they did a great job and put together an academy (last fall) with virtually no warning,” said Mr. Harline. “I think we might be able to come close to breaking even, not counting staff time, in the spring of 2021 if we can get enough cities to participate.

“But I think we’ve got a huge hill to climb, plus we’re putting in body-worn cameras which is going to take some policy and some training. I think it’s a huge hill to climb to add (a police academy) as an ongoing thing without some (financial) help.”

Chief Johnson believes the police department’s staff has the financial numbers close enough to where it just makes sense to have Dover conduct its own academy, especially considering the department’s changes in philosophies, such as body-worn cameras and community policing, that are about to take place.

“I’d like to think by the end of (this) calendar week I will have everything in place to be able to provide information (for city council) with what we did in the first academy,” Chief Johnson said. “The only trick here is to try to factor in going forward some of the lessons that we learned on some of the things we didn’t anticipate because this is our first go-around, but we will have those numbers.”

Several years ago, the Dover Police Department held its own training and had obtained certification for operating a police academy in Delaware. That certification had not lapsed, so the Dover Police Academy is a fully certified academy in the state of Delaware.

It came back to life because of the COVID-19 pandemic when the need to train many of its young recruits rose due to smaller enrollment openings at the Delaware State Police Academy during the global health crisis.

“Numbers of the first academy, which I was kind of doing a few things on the fly because we had to, is not going to necessarily be reflective of the numbers that would occur between April and July, and certainly not anything about how we would proceed if we even try to proceed in January of (20)22, once we got a few other things in order that are going to be necessary,” Chief Johnson said.

Adding up the numbers

Chief Johnson expects to keep the spring academy – which is slated to start on April 11 – at around 25 officers, including six or seven from the Dover Police Department, leaving room for 19 others from other municipalities.

If it again conducts its own police academy, the city will save around $1,500 for each student that it normally sends to the Delaware State Police Academy for training.

The department is also charging $1,000 per student to attend the Dover academy from other municipalities throughout the state.

The variance in training fees is based on the fact that Dover is a commuter academy, and the state police academy provides housing and three meals each day over the course of around a half a year.

“Right now, we are advertised, and we are slated to run the second session for the (Dover) academy that was built into our FY21 plan,” said Chief Johnson. “The tuitions that are captured from that academy will help close the loop on the expenses that were identified preliminarily.

“We are close. Our initial projections still appear to be on track that the tuitions that we anticipate based on projected enrollment will cover everything that we’ve done so far. The only thing that I’m not 100 percent sure on, which is why I don’t want to say it out loud yet, is I believe I might have a little bit of unidentified overtime that was generated as a result of covering holes in the academy.”

He added, “I don’t ever want to mislead on what our actual expenses are, but this is our first go-around and I want to be accurate for this council so there’s no perception at all that anything was obscure or didn’t go through council for your consideration.”

Ms. Pettitcord implored members of city council to carefully deliberate the issue of conducting another Dover Police Academy.

“I’m in no way trying to deter you from making this decision about holding the academy within the city of Dover,” she said. “My worry is we work and strive to obtain a balanced budget. I understand that we were under an emergency situation where the chief implemented the fall 2020 program.

“We did not have any of these costs in the FY21 budget, so I’m just a little concerned that holding two semesters full of an academy that was never contained within the chief’s budget might send him over budget. I’m willing to work with him to see if we can make it a balanced budget.”

Perfect timing?

Dover police are in the process of making philosophical changes in the way they police the city, mainly adding a community policing unit and utilizing body-worn cameras.

That’s why City Councilman Ralph Taylor Jr., who was a 20-year veteran of the Dover Police Department, said this is the perfect time for the city of Dover to take the lead in training officers from around the state in a reformed way of policing.

“Everybody’s right, there’s nobody wrong here,” Councilman Taylor said. “We need to see the numbers, but we also have the utmost confidence in Chief Johnson. I firmly believe that this academy is necessary. I believe that Dover is trying to take its rightful place as the leader of reform and all other aspects of policing.

“If we continue to farm out our law-enforcement professionals to other agencies that do not hold the exact same standards that we do, we’re going to be working backwards. We’re going to be throwing good money at bad training. Here, we know what we’re going to get. If it costs us a few extra dollars, pay it.”

Council President Bill Hare was in favor of Dover continuing its own academy.

“I support it and I think it is something that is needed,” he said.

Councilman Roy Sudler Jr. wasn’t ready to jump in head-first.

“I am in agreement with the (training) program 100%, but I just will feel more comfortable having the figures in front of me,” Councilman Sudler said. “That’s just my opinion.”

Councilman David Anderson agreed.

“This definitely has my support, 100 percent, for the spring,” he said. “I have to see more about going forward, but we have an emergency situation now. I just have a little heartburn with approving something without the numbers in front of me because that can set a bad precedent.”

Chief Johnson appreciated the support for the Dover Police Academy and insisted that it’s all part of a larger plan.

“We need to get to our full authorized strength, so not only can we go and roll out some of the community policing issues that we were discussing with some of the community policing staff trying to get our programs organized and assigned,” he said. “Now we’re in the process of selecting staff for community policing right now. It all interconnects and it all fits together.”

Councilman Fred Neil said he has no problem with supporting another academy but would like to see more closely how the final numbers pan out for last fall’s academy.

“Until we have the figures available to us, we’re really kind of suspended and we don’t know what we’re buying,” said Councilman Neil. “I think that it becomes important for us if the chief needs this to make sure that we have this academy available to us. But we also have to know what the figures are.

“Somewhere the money has got to be there, so we know what we’re dealing with. Yes, we want to have it because the chief said he needs it. I would say that unless there’s something that comes up in the next couple of weeks and Ms. Petticord says, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, we’re way out of line. We’re not going to be able to do this on a contingency basis by moving some figures around,’ I would say let’s go ahead.”

However, the numbers would still have to make sense.

Those figures will get their chance to be seen at Monday’s meeting, and then an important decision for Chief Johnson and the future of the Dover Police Academy will be made by members of council.