Preparing the Next Generation of Police

For nearly 50 years, the Act 120 Municipal Police Academy at Mansfield has prepared police officers to better serve their communities. The Academy’s 26–week program includes the courses you’d expect—emergency driving, defensive tactics, firearms. But the most important lessons may be the most personal.

 "The most important trait for a police officer—being in physical shape, using firearms, driving? That’s not the key," says Chris Wheeler, a veteran of the Pennsylvania State Police. "You need to be able to communicate. If you can’t communicate, you’re not an effective police officer. People call the police because they have a problem. Law enforcement is about solving problems. If you can’t communicate, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution."

Wheeler is director of the Mansfield’s Public Safety Training Institute, which runs the academy and provides initial and continuing professional education for criminal justice practitioners, first responders, public safety professionals, and the public. However, the institute’s signature program is the Municipal Police Academy, established in 1977 and one of only 17 pre-service municipal police academies across Pennsylvania certified by the Municipal Police Officers’ Education and Training Commission. The academy is a full time, six-month program, running from each May to November and encompassing 919 hours of training.

"A part of our success is that we select a small number of cadets. Our maximum class size is 24," says Wheeler. "That helps with getting more one-on-one time versus cadets getting lost. And we have a really good cadre of instructors, drawn from local, state, university and federal police officers."

 For Wheeler, directing the Public Safety Training Institute is a natural extension of his own career. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he joined the Pennsylvania State Police in 1994 and became an instructor for the State Police in 1996. A long-time instructor at the academy, Wheeler became its director after retiring from the State Police in 2017. 

"We attract cadets from all over the state, many from local counties. The majority are from a rural area. Our average cadet is in their mid-20s. Some as young as 18 and some as old as their late 40s," says Wheeler. "For some of our cadets, this is a second career. A lot have had this motivation to do it forever. It’s something they really wanted to do and it’s now or never." The curriculum encompasses both academic and applied components. 

"The classroom work is very challenging," says Wheeler. "Constitutional law, where the authority to police is derived from. Criminal law, arrest, search and seizure. Most of the statutes were written by attorneys and the legislature and not in the plainest terms. Cadets learn what this law really means. We do that early on and apply it throughout the academy.” And then there are the applied lessons — driving, active assault training, and tactical positioning. 

"Younger people learn differently. When I was going through bootcamp in early 90s and State Police academy, you didn’t question ‘why’ and if you did, the response you got back was ‘because I said so,’" says Wheeler. "That’s not an effective way to teach. We explain the ‘why.’" Graduates of the Academy are a testament to its quality—garnering a 95% job placement rate and consistently ranking among the top in Pennsylvania police academies in state certification examination scores. 

For Wheeler, the human element remains key. "As a police officer, you can plan your day, get reports done, get supplemental interviews done. But five minutes later you don’t know what call you’re going to get," he says.

 "An officer has to wear so many hats. You have to have integrity, a sense of right and wrong, and some empathy. Nobody is born saying their goal is to be a victim of this crime or a defendant of that crime. You have a job to do, and you represent your agency and society at large. And you want to represent society as its best. That should be every police officer’s goal."