The Police Training Institute is offering up its years of experience training law enforcement to assist a private security contractor currently operating in Iraq and around the globe.

A partnership announced last week will exchange students, faculty and training curricula between the Police Training Institute and Triple Canopy. The Police Training Institute, which has extensive experience in training Illinois police officers, hopes the cooperative relationship will further advance its efforts to deliver home-grown training methods outside the state.

“Our efforts to train folks internationally or nationally is a very small part of what we do,” said Tom Dempsey, director of the Police Training Institute. “They (Triple Canopy) give us more of an opportunity to do that.”

The details of the partnership are still evolving but are a slight departure for the Police Training Institute, which usually focuses on training Illinois law enforcement officials.

Although it is not their main focus, the Police Training Institute has been active on the international scene for years. In the past, it has forged cooperative relationships with its law enforcement training counterparts in countries including Russia, China and the Ukraine said Dempsey. India will soon be added to that list.

Such expansion, however, will in no way diminish the Police Training Institute’s core objective of training current and future law enforcement officials in the prairie state, Dempsey said.

“The partnership will enable Triple Canopy and the PTI to combine subject matter experts whose primary mission is to provide world-class tactical training to domestic and international law enforcement officers and executives,” said Lee Van Arsdale, CEO of Triple Canopy. “The agreement will allow Triple Canopy to host some of its tactical law enforcement training programs at University of Illinois and Police Training Institute facilities, bringing Triple Canopy experts directly to Champaign, Illinois.”

Arsdale also said that the partnership allows for Triple Canopy to develop international training projects with the Police Training Institute’s “experienced staff.”

The partnership between the two parties developed “out of conversations of mutual interest,” Dempsey said. He added that the agreement to work together is fairly wide open.

“We just need to see what direction it takes,” he said.