Editor’s note: This article is the first of a two-part series. Read part two here.

Of the 56 police officers and sheriff’s deputies certified last Thursday by the University’s Police Training Institute to wear the badge and serve their communities, one stood out among the rest. The recruits in the basic law enforcement class voted for one of their classmates to walk across the stage in the auditorium of The Vineyard Church in Urbana to stand between the flags of the United States and the state of Illinois and receive the Ervin H. Warren award. 

The award is presented for excellence. It was named for the first director of the 59-year-old police academy — the oldest in the state. The award’s recipient is determined through input from classmates, instructors and PTI administration to recognize academic achievement and responsiveness to instruction, as well as unimpeachable moral character, professional conduct and integrity. 

The recipient of this award sat in the front row. He stands nearly 6 feet tall and wears a light brown uniform shirt paired with dark brown pants, patches on his shoulders and a gold, six-point star badge on the left side of his chest. Brad Atkinson is the newest sheriff’s deputy to take on the streets of Champaign County.

A Champaign County-native, Brad was sent by the sheriff’s office to train in basic law enforcement through PTI’s January  class. Although he was just hired in December, Brad’s dream to protect and serve his community was years in the making. And his pursuit to join law enforcement was no less of a struggle than the academy’s fight to remain an available institution to train officers newly hired to serve the state of Illinois.

***

Other than his father-in-law, he’s the only person in his family to take up such service. A high school and junior college golfer, Brad wanted to pursue a career in the golf industry. With his degree in business management from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, he spent his early adulthood managing golf facilities around the Midwest.

When he and his wife decided to move back to central Illinois, Brad decided a career change was in order because so few opportunities to advance in the golf industry exist around the area. After talking with his wife’s father, who is retired from the Champaign County Sheriff’s Office, he set his sights on becoming a police officer.

It wouldn’t be easy, he knew. He had no experience in the field, and his SIU degree didn’t prepare him for law enforcement. Still, beginning in October 2011, Brad began interviewing and testing for law enforcement positions first at CCSO. The following spring, he tested at the Champaign, University and Rantoul police departments. He meanwhile tested to be a correctional officer at the Champaign County Jail, a job that might position him to be hired later as a road deputy.

Although Brad wasn’t chosen as an officer or a deputy, he was hired to work master control at the jail, a part-time position in which he operated the doors at the facility. After four months on the job, he became a correctional officer, a full-time position he held for 18 months, while retesting at CCSO in January 2013. After nearly a year, a spot opened up in the sheriff’s office.

“I was fortunate enough to get it,” Brad said.

But before Brad could begin the career he expected to find rewarding and fulfilling, a career in which he could engage with community members and uphold a high level of professionalism and integrity, he had to make it through the academy. Ahead of him lay 12 weeks of training in firearms, control tactics, community-oriented policing, law, Spanish and patrol operations.

“It’s going to be a long 12 weeks,” he said. “It’s going to be tough, but it’s going to be fun.”

***

While Brad tried to start a career in law enforcement, the academy where he’d ultimately be sent to train was fighting the state and University to remain open. 

The Police Training Institute was established in 1955 by a state statue, the first police academy in Illinois. Five more have since opened around the state, with only one other — the Illinois State Police Training Academy — being residential like PTI.

In March 2010, amid a financial climate that led the University to consider how it was spending its money, then-Chancellor Robert Easter and then-Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Richard Wheeler assembled a project team of six University faculty members to review PTI’s place in the University system.

“It is critical to emphasize that this review is a complete and open process that does not begin with a predetermined aim of withdrawing or reducing resources or concluding activities,” the March 26, 2010, letter to the project team read. “Instead, we ask that the review openly examine the extent to which the resources dedicated to the Police Training Institute enhance the University and its mission.”

The University had been supporting PTI with a subsidy of around $1 million for at least a decade, with the figure being about $900,000 when the team was assembled. The project team was charged with examining not only PTI’s relationship with the University, but also its financial models.

In a 14-page report, the project team determined that, although PTI helps fulfill the University’s mandate to provide “public service and economic development,” it doesn’t serve the core mission of a land-grant university. If the entity were to remain at the Urbana campus, it would have to become a financially self-sustaining unit, as the University could not afford to continue supplying the subsidy that “diverts money that is meant for more essential campus priorities.”

On Nov. 17, 2010, the two campus administrators signed a letter to their colleagues that slated PTI to close its doors by December 2011.

***

In his 12 years as Champaign County Sheriff, Dan Walsh had never sent his recruits anywhere other than PTI.

“It’s local, it’s easier for the guys, the University of Illinois is a great institution. I think PTI does a fantastic job of getting new people ready to go on the road and go into the field training program,” he said. “There’d be no reason for me to send people any place else.”

Walsh has been an instructor at the academy for about 20 years, combining his experiences as an Urbana police officer and a lawyer to teach subjects including law, Terry stops and search warrants over the years. 

Sitting in the classroom with his new hires, he can see how they react under pressure and how much they pay attention in class. He can evaluate whether he is hiring recruits of the same quality as other departments. He also gets to tell his recruits, such as Brad, how he wants specific elements of laws enforced as he goes through the lessons.

Unwilling to let PTI close without a fight, Walsh joined with state legislators and other local politicians to lobby in favor of PTI. 

***

To work for CCSO as a road deputy, recruits have to pass a written test, a screening by a merit commission, a physical test, a daylong psychological exam and a medical physical. 

The day Brad succeeded in the hiring process, receiving his job offer about three weeks before class commenced, he began a one-year probation period during which any misstep could cost him his job. The first three months of the probation were to be spent at the police academy, followed by four months with a field training officer. The remaining five months would be on his own.

So far, Brad had made his way to the academy.

He and his classmates arrived on PTI on the morning of Jan. 7, Brad’s birthday, two days later than planned because of dangerous driving conditions created by a weekend snowstorm. They hailed from departments in every part of the state, including the counties of Morgan, Winnebago, Will, Kendall and Kankakee, the cities of Oak Lawn, Carbondale, Macomb, Leroy, Bourbonnais, Decatur, Woodstock and Urbana.

As the recruits arrived, dressed in collared shirts and dress pants, they found their alphabetically arranged seats in the PTI classroom and placed their locked firearm cases on the table before them. The recruits sat in a navy blue chair behind a triangular paper name card, with a stack of forms they’d address during the daylong orientation with Mr. Chuck Deakin, PTI’s operations manager.

Deakin talked the recruits through the academy’s rules, policies and procedures. He explained the different uniforms they’d wear throughout their 12 weeks and arranged the class into cars of three to four people who would ride together to all of their classes, based on the groupings of two to three roommates who would live together at Orchard Downs apartments.

As his overview of the program continued, advising recruits, he reminded the class they chose these jobs for a reason.

“Hopefully, it’s a dream for you,” he said. “This is the best position, best job, that you can ever have.”

***

The Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board was given a letter from the University at its quarterly meeting in March 2011 that said PTI’s planned closure had been moved back six months to June 2012. The board, a government entity established to promote and maintain professionalism in law enforcement, discussed that it might be time to move courses to other academies with PTI’s upcoming shutdown. 

By its next meeting in June, ILETSB director Kevin McClain had drafted a letter as an update on the status of PTI, and the board was prepared to hear presentations by three schools: the University of Illinois, Western Illinois University and Southwestern Illinois College — where a non-residential training institute operates.

According to the meeting’s minutes, the board views its responsibility to ensure training would be available somewhere in the region if PTI did shut down. The board wanted to know if either of the two remaining schools “would be willing to pick up the slack statewide in the event that PTI would no longer exist.” The options included establishing an academy at WIU, home to ILETSB’s executive institute, or upgrading SWIC to a residential academy.

In addition to these possible changes, the board was also interested in creating a research center. ILETSB discussed at its September meeting the use of this new academy “for research projects that could include establishing an updated curriculum for basic law enforcement training.”

ILETSB voted in September to give WIU residential academy status — a 16-to-1 vote. The only dissent was local, from Laurel Prussing, mayor of Urbana.

***

By the end of 2011, local and state politicians were mounting their fight to keep PTI’s doors open, from inside the training board and out.

State legislators Naomi Jakobsson, Mike Frerichs and Chapin Rose tried to work through the Illinois General Assembly to pass legislation favoring PTI. Prussing fought her battle as both an ILETSB board member and former legislator to build a team among the politicians to lobby for PTI.

She said the University’s study failed to recognize the needs of the people who use PTI’s services and that the closure of PTI would hurt her city.

“(The University) was saying this isn’t really what a land-grant university does, so I looked up the land-grant law and, yeah, it is what a land-grant university does,” she said. “These universities were set up to do practical things, teach regular people how to do things.”

She said there’s a real need for police training in the state, and no one should have to drive hundreds of miles to get it.

“The reason that I wanted to keep this one is that it had an excellent reputation, it was doing a good job,” she said. “Why would you destroy something that is working so well?”

Despite everyone’s efforts, at its March 2012 meeting. ILETSB discussed the establishment of an academy at WIU. Despite Prussing and PTI director Mike Schlosser’s recommendations that ILETSB continue discussions with University administration, the board passed a motion to “terminate the Basic Training as presented at PTI at the end of March.”

Larry Smith, deputy director of ILETSB, said the decision was made as preparation for PTI’s closure. But Prussing said the move was politically charged.

“They were mad, they were fed up,” she said of ILETSB’s attitude toward the University for wanting to close an academy. “They were just trying to close it because they’d already decided they wanted to move it to Western and Western wanted it, and so that was all this game-playing about this decertification.”

Although its doors would remain open for the time being, PTI could not offer its basic law enforcement course to certify new officers. To make PTI available for Brad and his 55 classmates one year later, it would take a change of administration at the University, a restructuring of PTI’s funding model and an additional purpose for PTI to serve.

Sari can be reached at [email protected] and @Sari_Lesk.