PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia sheriff is floating the idea of creating a training academy for sheriff’s deputies in the city that could also serve surrounding counties.
At her budget hearing this week, Sheriff Rochelle Bilal acknowledged staffing shortages in her office and, as at least part of a solution, proposed establishing a local Sheriff’s Academy so recruits would not have to decamp to the current training facility in State College for 19 weeks before being sworn in.
“We could get a thousand people to apply, and then we get to orientation and they find out they have to go to Penn State five days a week and stay up there, they disappear,” she said…