BOZEMAN — Working in law enforcement can be dangerous and demanding — but how much work does it take just to earn the badge?
“There’s just so much in law enforcement that you need to know,” said Clint Harper.
WATCH: Inside Montana's first new law enforcement academy since statehood
Harper has worked in law enforcement for 12 years and is currently a captain with the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office. For him, the job is more of a passion than a profession.
“I’ve always enjoyed talking to people and being in the community. And I think it’s a very noble profession,” Harper said.
But getting that badge, he explained, isn’t easy.
“Lots of training. Every state, you start off with a basic police academy that you go through. Typically, that’s anywhere from 12 to 24 weeks,” Harper said.
Next comes the field training and evaluation program — months of on-the-job training alongside senior officers.
“Once you complete that, then that’s when you become a solo officer or solo deputy,” Harper said.
Harper went through this process years ago. Now, he’s giving back as an instructor for the all-new Law Enforcement Academy at Montana State University’s Gallatin College.
“This is the first law enforcement academy outside of the Montana Law Enforcement Academy in Helena that’s existed since statehood,” said Adam Pankratz, deputy chief of MSU Police and fellow academy instructor.
Pankratz explained that Montana’s primary law enforcement academy was once housed at MSU in the late 1950s before relocating to Helena. For more than 50 years, that was the state’s only training academy. But a recent need for more officers prompted the creation of a second program.
“They were looking for Gallatin College to help with that training capacity — not to compete, but to assist in getting law enforcement officers trained and on the street so our agencies across the state could become fully staffed much quicker,” Pankratz said.
In the last decade, Montana has added more than 400 law enforcement officers. The new academy is now meeting that demand.
“There are currently 14 students. They have 13 weeks of in-person classes, then they finish up with a couple of remote classes in the fall,” Pankratz said.
The program begins with classroom instruction before progressing to hands-on training scenarios.
“To pretend to resemble different places — a domestic dispute, a fight at a bar, a theft at a local business,” Pankratz said.
Graduates earn an accredited Certificate of Applied Science in Law Enforcement, equipped with the skills and knowledge to join departments across the state.
“Our goal in law enforcement, especially in this community, is we want those behind us to be better than we were,” Harper said. “We constantly want law enforcement to be better, because this is the community we live in. And we want it to be safe.”
To learn how to sign up for next year's courses, visit this link: https://gallatin.montana.edu/academics/law-enforcement-academy/index.html
