(Beaver Dam) The Beaver Dam Police Department is bolstering their ranks. The agency recently had two officers graduate from the Fox Valley Technical College Police Academy. Lieutenant Jeremiah Johnson says Joey Salazar and Megan Ruin started their academy class in June.
“They go up there for the 16-week…720 hours of actual training time and at the end of that they have a physical agility test, they have a written test, and then they also have scenario live-based training tests that they take,” says Johnson. “Our candidates, they passed all three of them.”
Johnson says the new officer’s will now begin their field training process.
“Which is another 16 weeks where they will ride along with our select field training officers (FTO’s) and they’ll start out learning from what the FTO does on certain calls,” says Johnson.
The candidate will then take on more calls at the end of that 16 week process. “Our FTO’s, they will actually go out of uniform and wear street clothes. They will just ride along with our candidate and make sure that they can handle the call without the assistance of another officer. And then we know that they’re good to go on their own.”
Johnson says the department is close to being fully staffed.
“We have one more candidate in the academy and she will be done on December 16th and then we will be fully staffed,” says Johnson. He does note… “we still have to go through the field training process with Joey and Megan.”
Johnson says if everything goes according to plan, both Salazar and Ruin will be on patrol on their own by mid-February or early-March.
