Santa Rosa Junior College

Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) was founded in 1918 and is the tenth oldest public two-year college in California. The college has blossomed into a multi-campus college serving over 20,000 students in Sonoma County with a main campus in the heart of Santa Rosa featuring beautiful turn-of-the-century ivy covered buildings and state-of-the-art classroom and laboratory facilities. The college has a permanent branch campus, two additional teaching locations, and a self-sustaining farm, which generates income and provides hands-on learning opportunities for students.

Basic Police Initiative

The College’s Public Safety Training Center (PSTC) hosts a vibrant Basic Police Academy (BPA) program that has served multiple Northern California counties for more than 60 years. The Intensive 20-week academy is certified by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (P.O.S.T.) and successful completion of the course makes students eligible for employment as a police officer or deputy sheriff anywhere in California. Since the inception of the program, SRJC has graduated thousands of police academy recruits who have gone on to serve communities throughout the state of California.

The staff and faculty of BPA have a desired focus on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Anti-Racism, and Accessibility (DEIAA) concepts to enhance both working conditions and curriculum. Three candidates from the PSTC have been selected to participate in the SRJC’s Courageous Leaders Program (CLA). Much of the CLA curriculum aligns well with concepts taught in the BPA’s Cultural Diversity Learning Domain. One of the primary instructors for cultural diversity is one of the candidates who will participate in CLA – a fantastic opportunity to strengthen the police academy program in areas of developing cultural humility, implicit bias training, racial profiling, discrimination, and other DEIAA concepts.

BPA’s customer law enforcement agencies have done a remarkable job in increasing the diversity amongst their peace officer candidates and faculty note that this is a trend that has been steadily increasing during the last several years. As an example, the fall 2023 BPA class features 16 female recruits, representing 35% of the class (the national average for women in the law enforcement profession hovers around 10-13%). Moreover, BPA’s summer 2023 graduating class featured 26% who were foreign born students, and 53% who spoke English as a second language – a remarkable trend in diversity and a trend that SRJC champions.

Steven Potter is an Associate Dean and the Director of the Basic Police Academy. When asked what makes SRJC’s BPA the best in the state, he cites the focus on community policing and de-escalation.

“Our program has been on the cutting edge of police training in critical areas of community policing and de-escalation for several years, even before the social justice movements beginning in the summer of 2020. Prior to 2020, our program pro-actively added hours above the minimum standard in both community policing and de-escalation learning domains”. He was also proud to note that amongst 42 programs state-wide, SRJC’s summer 2023 class ranked #2 academically on their final state mandated written exam with an average score of 90.55%.

SRJC is remarkably proud of its BPA students and their success.