The people who serve Wheat Ridge and the department’s culture have turned it into a destination for young people pursuing a career in law enforcement.
On Friday, June 5, eight people graduated the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and Lakewood Combined Regional Law Enforcement Academy to join the ranks at the Wheat Ridge Police Department. The academy is a 24-week program that focuses on training, testing and leadership to prepare recruits to become Colorado POST certified law enforcement officers.
The training doesn’t stop at the academy, as these eight graduates will spend the next four to five months working with an individual Field Training Officer in Wheat Ridge to understand how the department creates public safety in the community. In total, it takes ten months to a year to be an independent officer with no “training wheels” in Wheat Ridge, from the first day at the academy to the first day the officer is on their own.
The Wheat Ridge Police Department currently has an authorized strength for 87 sworn officers. The eight graduating the academy represents nearly 10% of the department’s authorized strength. Because of the lengthy onboarding process from the initial hire to completing field training, the department has been committed to a constant recruitment cycle, to keep staffing at or above authorized strength.
Because the department is in the strongest staffing position under Chief Chris Murtha’s tenure, patrol has been fully staffed and has significantly been able to cut response times down for critical calls. Strong department staffing also helps with resource management and allows officers to work more proactively to serve as a crime deterrent.
On average, officers in Wheat Ridge respond to two more calls per shift than the average officer in the Denver metro area. While the department is not the largest, there are outsized calls for service due to the influx of people traveling through the community between Denver, Lakewood and Arvada, in addition to major state and federal roads such as I-70, I-76, Highway 58, Sheridan Boulevard, Wadsworth Boulevard, Kipling Street and Youngfield Street.
While the department has seen graduating classes as large as seven officers in the past, no class has surpassed that number until this year. The department will continue to focus hard on recruiting the best people who not only want to start their law enforcement career in Wheat Ridge, but finish it here too.
