Miami-Dade Police Dept. Graduating Record Number Of Officer Trainees
Follow CBSMIAMI.COM: Facebook | Twitter
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The Miami-Dade Police Department is holding a graduation for trainees on Wednesday.
The MDPD will graduate and swear in 139 police officer trainees, a record breaking amount of graduates.
The trainees have successfully completed one of the three different levels of certification. They are the Basic Law Enforcement (BLE) class, the Certified Transitional Academy (CTA) and the Lateral (LAT) class.
The 65 trainees graduating from the BLE class are men and women who had no prior police training and had never taken the state certification test.
The training program was 35 weeks long and in order to take the state certification test, the trainees had to meet the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) requirements.
The CTA class was 20 weeks long and was comprised of 25 trainees who had attended another outside training academy. They had each taken and passed the state certification test on their own.
The other 51 graduates are officers who had worked for other police departments and therefore had to complete the 7-week LAT Class, which focused on MDPD policies and standard operating procedures.
Guest speakers at Wednesday's graduation ceremony are Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez and MDPD Director Juan Perez.