The City of Dallas has reached an agreement with the University of North Texas (UNT) to construct a new and modernized police academy on its South Dallas campus.
The Dallas City Council acquired the existing police academy near the Dallas Executive Airport as a temporary location, thirty-two years ago. The council recently extended the lease for another five years.
A team of volunteer architects and planners have been working on the design for the new academy. A state of the art facility, the three-story facility at the UNT campus would have a nature area near athletic fields and dorms, and be furnished with innovative equipment to offer reality-based training as well as artificial intelligence.
Additionally, there will be space dedicated to the professional development and continuing education of veteran police officers, including cultural training.
The team shared their most recent renderings of the academy at the Dallas City Council Public Safety Committee last month.
“I love the academic focus this will bring to the police academy. I will say I’m a little bit concerned about how long this effort is going to take,” said Councilmember Cara Mendelsohn.
Planners estimate that design may take around a year and a half, with another two years necessary after that fo for construction.
Per CBS DFW, Councilwoman Mendelsohn described the current police training academy as “a horrible dump.”
She told NBC DFW, “The place is terrible. It is run down. It is small. It smelled bad. There is mold growing in the ladies’ locker room. The exercise facility is tiny. It’s just not suited to be a police academy,” she said.
“It’s embarrassing when I walk through the academy,” admitted Dallas Chief of Police Eddie Garcia. “It’s not a location that we that we really want our recruits to be,” he told CBS 11.
According to CBS, the current academy has six small classrooms, a gym with broken mirrors and rusted weights, and a locker room with a broken urinal and too few lockers for the amount of recruits.
“I’m thinking about a Super Bowl-caliber team, yet we’re training and practicing at facilities that are more appropriate for a middle school football team,” said Councilman & Public Safety Committee Chairman Adam McGough.
McGough further claimed that the state of the present academy is part of the reason the Dallas Police Department is understaffed.
He said at over thirty years old, the small one-story building is one of the factors as to why the force continues to shrinking in number: “During COVID, that was the biggest excuse we were given on why we couldn’t hire the officers that we had even put in the budget. We couldn’t hold classes because we couldn’t even space folks.”
The new location reflects a more community-based approach from the department, according to CBS.
“The message is going to be that we’re in the middle of our community, in the middle of our city as we’re training our new officers,” said Chief Garcia.
Councilman Tennell Atkins, who represents the area around UNT’s Dallas campus, told NBC that the Dallas residents who will soon become the neighbors of the new academy must be closely involved in the plans for its development.
“We got to have our eyes wide open, with the community, how we’re going to develop that community,” Atkins said.
Financing estimates are expected in the coming weeks, followed by a search for the necessary funds. According to NBC DFW, UNT President Bob Mong said that some private donors may be willing to help pay for the new training facility’s construction.
Mendelsohn and McGough want the academy prepared as soon as possible.
