By Gail A. Tierney
CCSO Public Information Officer

From a nationally recognized School Resource Officer program to the mandatory Teen Driver Challenge classroom and hands-on instruction, the Sheriff’s Office and the Citrus County School District have shared a homegrown partnership for more than two decades.

Starting in July, their innovative partnering will enter into an entirely uncharted arena. Christened the Citrus County Public Safety Training Center, this new center of learning will replace and expand Citrus County’s Law Enforcement Academy that is currently ensconced at the Withlacoochee Technical Institute in Inverness.

Gail TierneySchool Superintendent Sandra “Sam” Himmel and Sheriff Jeff Dawsy nurtured a vision of how they could join forces, combine resources, foster cost savings and launch a more effective and efficient facility to train aspiring law enforcement and corrections personnel. What’s more, existing public safety personnel would have a multi-purpose venue available to them for completing their scheduled state-mandated training requirements.

Named as the training center’s new director, Sergeant Phil Royal, who currently heads up the training unit at the Sheriff’s Office, is uniquely qualified to introduce higher standards into the academy’s operating curriculum. Besides his broad-based training qualifications, Royal’s a certified law enforcement officer, paramedic and firefighter.

With diversification driving the employment needs of the future, the new director envisions a facility where not only potential law enforcement personnel, but those seeking a career in firefighting or emergency medical services, can receive the best training opportunities in the most cost-effective setting. Future training partnerships with the county’s Fire Rescue Division and Nature Coast Emergency Medical Services are under consideration.

Collaborating with both Himmel and Dawsy in the months preceding the public announcement of the new training center, Royal strongly agreed that combining resources, such as instructors, trainers, equipment, facilities, budgets and networking capabilities, was key to the training center’s success.

Enhanced standards that Royal expects to bring to the curricula include more stringent instructor requirements, reality-based scenario training, practical preparedness, physical fitness expectations, mental preparedness training, career diversity and lesson plans that are based on Florida Department of Law Enforcement and state fire standards. As a result, graduates should be better prepared and better qualified to meet the public safety challenges today and in the years ahead.

Royal is quick to add that newcomers to the training center from Citrus and neighboring counties should expect an educational experience that far exceeds what state standards require. He contends that the curriculum can go beyond the minimum requirements without making them mandatory. In the end, the direct benefit not only to the cadet, but to the community as a whole, is a higher caliber of public safety professional.

“This is just a really good way of doing business,” the sheriff added.