Tarrant $25M sheriff’s training academy will train jail staff for the region
The new Tarrant County Sheriff’s Training Academy has welcomed its first class of recruits to work as detention officers across the region.
Housed in the Sheriff John B. York Building in south Fort Worth, the $25 million academy serves most of the surrounding counties and will teach hundreds of students a year. The current class of 58 cadets will undergo six weeks of lectures, demonstrations and hands-on training before beginning work for their counties.
Tarrant County’s academy can teach jailers across multiple counties because standards in Texas are set at the state level by Texas Commission on Law Enforcement and the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
Complete with mock jail cells, fitness areas, a computer lab and expansive classrooms, the Tarrant County Training Academy can see someone from recruitment all the way to their badge ceremony.
The building is outfitted with advanced technology, including three interview rooms with lie detectors that only use retina movement to base its findings.
Once the purchase is approved by the county commissioners, the academy will also have two driving simulators and an immersive weapons training simulator.
“Our job out here is to create readers, writers, and thinkers every single day, and to make them the best that they can be for the citizens of Tarrant County,” Captain Jessica Brittain said. “This place, these simulators, this technology is going to afford that, and we get to make people out here smart and better and more equipped to be able to go out and provide protection for each and every one of you.”
Brittain said cadets are also taught about mental illness and how to treat people who are in jails.
“We talk about everybody that is in our jails are human beings,” Brittain said. “Most of them, they just made a mistake, they’re very good people that just happened to make a mistake and found themselves in jail, and they have an opportunity to walk into that jail every single time, maybe change a life.”