Southeast Missouri State University President Carlos Vargas has announced a series of changes aimed at strengthening the public safety and law enforcement training programs.
The university's Law Enforcement Academy has been renamed to the Police Academy and will now report to Dr. Richard Flotron, who has also been named chief of police for SEMO’s University Police Department, formerly known as the Department of Public Safety.
Flotron said the name change to the Police Academy came about as they discussed the upcoming changes to the program.
“Most police circles are getting away from the law enforcement name, and going more to policing, because law enforcement is only one small aspect of what we do,” Flotron said.
Flotron is also the Chief of Police for the University Police Department, which was previously named the Department of Public Safety. Flotron said his goal for being the head of the two departments is to be more student-forward.
“I’m big on being very transformative. One of the things that I’ve really tried to set out to do is be very student-centric. We have to be more student-centric because we’re dealing so much with the students. That’s our population. I really want to change the culture to be more student-centric, to be more visible and seen on campus,” Flotron said.
Along with the name changes to the two departments also comes some restructuring of the Police Academy. These updates coincide with a $1.5 million renovation project to the academy. Flotron said there will be a few updates to equipment and facilities.
“They’re adding some security features to the building. They’re adding a defensive tactics room. They’re also adding driving simulators. And then the other big room is the virtual room, which is the firearm training simulator, or what they call augmented reality. It’s an immersive experience. And through that, you can do low light, no light, scenario training, force training,” Flotron said.
Flotron said there was also some restructuring happening in the program's administration.
“Prior, they had a directory and training coordinator. At this time, we’re going to eliminate the training coordinator position and just have the director position. But we’re changing that to captain. It’s just for correspondence purposes through the state, so that captain will be the acting director of the academy,” Flotron said.
Flotron said he has plans for more collaboration within the department.
“I really have plans on collaborating with a lot of the local police departments, sheriff’s departments, and I’m going to create an Advisory Council for the academy, and it’s going to have a lot of police leaders from around the region,” Flotron said.
Along with local collaboration, Flotron said they also want to look at expanding education to the local counties around Cape.
“I really want to be able to offer more continuing education for the local departments. We have this dream of turning it into a regional police training hub, for the whole Southeast, because there’s no academies between the state line and JeffCo. We need to think outside of just being Cape Girardeau. There’s no reason why we can’t reach into Illinois or Arkansas or Kentucky,” Flotron said.
With new leadership, plans to upgrade facilities, and big goals, SEMO’s Police Academy is aiming to become a hub for law enforcement training.
This story was originally published by the Southeast Arrow, a student-run news publication, and news partner with KRCU Public Radio.