Report: APD Training Academy curriculum review flawed, hampered by resistance to reform

A third-party evaluation of the Austin Police Department Training Academy’s curriculum review process found it lacked “a clearly defined mission and scope, which hampered its effectiveness from the beginning,” and that it suffered from instructors’ resistance to reform and did little to improve police-community relations, echoing previous concerns. 

At City Council’s direction, city staff hired two outside consulting firms – Kroll Associates and Joyce James Consulting – last December to conduct an independent assessment of the curriculum review process. 

Interim Assistant City Manager Bruce Mills turned over the resulting report in a March 16 memo to Council members. It focuses on the Academy Curriculum Review Committee, which APD established in 2021 as a mix of community members, academics and APD officers. 

In addition to an unclear mandate, the committee lacked “established meeting protocols” to organize its recommended curriculum changes and to track APD’s responses, contributing to low morale, according to the report. 

“Committee members became frustrated with how little impact their work appeared to have on cadet training,” the authors wrote, adding that “few curriculum changes have been documented.” 

APD also prohibited committee members from observing the training academy courses they were tasked with reviewing and generally opposed reforms.

“There remain institutional barriers within APD and a resistance to re-thinking training approaches and curriculum content among some sworn instructors,” the report states. “This is partly due to a lack of executive leadership oversight of an involvement in Academy affairs.” 

The report goes on to explain that the division manager in charge of the academy’s curriculum is a civilian employee, who some instructors believe “has no authority to impose directives on sworn members.” 

The concerns aren’t new.

During a Dec. 5 meeting of the city’s Public Safety Commission, committee members asked APD leadership why they weren’t able to review much of the training curriculum, attend academy classes or ascertain which of their recommendations had been implemented, as the Austin Monitor previously reported.

“It is increasingly hard to believe that there’s a real desire to improve those relationships (between the community and APD) and improve the way that the community both perceives and interacts with the police,” community representative Serita Fontanesi said. 

The Public Safety Commission revisited the issue during a Jan. 9 meeting, expressing frustration with what it viewed as APD’s stonewalling tactics.

“Just to summarize, two years ago, maybe longer, the City Council, which is supposed to run this city, passed a resolution creating the curriculum review process and put some citizens on that,” Chair Rebecca Bernhardt told APD leadership. “And in that resolution, it said you were supposed to let them into trainings, and now we’re in 2023, and they still can’t get into training.” 

To address these issues, the Kroll report recommends APD replace the committee with two new advisory groups. A Community Advisory Council would include community members and regularly meet with APD leadership. A Professional Advisory Committee would include academics and review the academy curriculum.

“In combination, these two advisory bodies would allow for (1) robust community input through the (Community Advisory Council) into how APD trains and prepares cadets to serve the citizens of Austin, and (2) meaningful and substantive improvements to training curriculum through the (Professional Advisory Committee) working groups,” the authors wrote.

The report also urges APD to:

• Hold quarterly meetings to collect community feedback at the sector level;
• Retrain academy instructors and supervisors on the division manager’s authority and holding accountable those who don’t follow directives; 
• “(P)ublicly affirm the work of community advisory panels as necessary, legitimate and beneficial to APD and the City of Austin”; and 
• Designate an assistant chief to implement these recommendations. 

In his memo, Mills wrote that city management and APD staff were assessing the report’s findings and recommendations.

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