B.C. allowing Vancouver and Victoria to create independent police academies<\/p>\n
Published 3:04 pm Friday, March 6, 2026<\/p>\n
The province has approved an arrangement for the Vancouver and Victoria police departments to open their own police academies this year as satellite programs of the Justice Institute of B.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese new police training academies will allow police to enhance their recruiting efforts, strengthen succession planning, and better respond to growing service demands,\u201d said Nina Krieger, minister of public safety and solicitor general, at a news conference in Victoria on Friday, March 6.<\/p>\n
This will increase the total number of Justice Institute seats to 144 from 96. It has three training cohorts each year, so the institute will now have the capacity to train 432 new police recruits annually.<\/p>\n
Satellite academies will operate under Justice Institute oversight to ensure a consistent curriculum. Vancouver and Victoria police departments will fund the program themselves.<\/p>\n
The sites are approved on an interim two-year basis, with both sites expected to begin operating this year.<\/p>\n
Victoria Police Chief Fiona Wilson said the change removes a barrier for recruits who may find it difficult to travel to New Westminster for training.<\/p>\n
She gave the example of a recruit in her department with 12-month-old twins who was about to head to New Westminster for a couple of months of training.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really looking forward to the opportunity to be able to have our training local so that our recruits can go home to their families in the evening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Vancouver Police Chief Steve Rai said it enables his department to train officers on the latest technology, such as virtual reality, and to create Vancouver-specific scenarios.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll enhance it, but the core nucleus will meet the standards,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Justice Institute trains municipal police officers, but the RCMP staffs rural departments. The RCMP police union says the rural force needs 300 additional officers to meet 2012 per capita staffing levels.<\/p>\n
That would require provincial funding, which is not required for these two new academies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"B.C. allowing Vancouver and Victoria to create independent police academies Published 3:04 pm Friday, March 6, 2026 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-519229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}