The first U.S. police training academy was August Vollmer’s Berkeley Police School, which opened in 1908.1 At the time, most agencies did not provide formal training to new officers, and the idea of providing new personnel with training on basic policing skills was, at the time, quite revolutionary. In 1935, the FBI initiated the National Police Academy (now the National Academy) as one of the first efforts to provide advanced training to veteran police personnel.2 The establishment of these two police education and training programs laid the foundation for the way in which modern officers are prepared to enter and advance in their careers in policing.
