The Delaware County Sheriff’s Office (DCSO) recently completed its inaugural class of its own peace officer training academy, and the plan is to welcome a new class in October.

The academy is based out of a former school building on County Home Road and ran five days a week from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. beginning in February and ending in July. The cadets graduated from the program at a ceremony last week.

The academy’s commander, Chief Deputy Dave Wiseman, said the inaugural class consisted of six DCSO deputies, two officers from the City of Delaware Police Department, and one officer from the City of Lancaster Police Department.

Last year, Sheriff Jeffrey Balzer said the academy was created because there’s a limited number of training academies in central Ohio, which means it can be difficult to get incoming employees into an academy, especially for an agency as large as the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office.

Wiseman said it was advantageous to run the academy for several reasons.

“It was a great thing for us to be able to do it in house,” Wiseman said Wednesday. “We’re faced with several challenges, like everybody else, on trying to find applicants and people that want to be in this career field of law enforcement today. We’re looking futuristic (since) several of our employees and deputies are eligible to retire. We’re looking at how we keep employees? Where do we get employees? How do we keep the community safe by having the staffing levels we need to have in place?”

Wiseman oversaw the class, but it was taught by sheriff’s office personnel.

“It was great,” he said. “(It’s) kind of liking being a parent. … (You’re) exposing them to things they’ve never seen before and giving your knowledge and your abilities and sharing it with them and seeing them pick up the task and master that.”

Wiseman said the academy helped cadets develop psycho-motor skills they need for the job and learn how to do technical skills like processing a crime scene.

“They’ve only seen it on TV, and now they understand it,” Wiseman said. “It’s very worthwhile for the instructors to see (the cadets’) careers start in what they want to do.”

Wiseman said the DCSO kept in “constant communication” with Lancaster and Delaware police and updated them throughout the academy on how the students were progressing.

“We asked them for feedback on things we could do better,” Wiseman said.

The next class is scheduled to start in October, he added, and the office is likely to run one class a year but could do more if it has the applicants and staff.

“(We’ll be) evaluating what our needs are and (what our) manpower will be,” Wiseman said.

Glenn Battishill can be reached at 740-413-0903.