Collin College has a growing reputation in international policing circles, and its Public Safety Training Center (PSTC) is being recognized as one of the best training facilities in the country.
In the summer and fall of 2021, the Collin College Law Enforcement Academy (CCLEA) hosted five cadets from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for its 24-week, 855-hour basic police officer training program. The cadets graduated in October 2021, and organizers of that exchange program said they saw room to expand those types of training opportunities to police agencies from other countries.
This spring, the college welcomed delegations from Thailand and Saudi Arabia to tour the Public Safety Training Center, further introducing the facility to the international policing community.
Forty police captains from the Royal Thai Police Department (RTPD) visited Collin College on April 16 as part of a fact-finding trip to North Texas to further intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation between the United States and Thailand. The group also toured the Dallas Police Department and Plano Police Department facilities.
Officer Surasak Yamfang, a Collin College police officer who served for seven years in the RPTD, helped organize the trip by working with Thai Police generals and the legal attaché of the U.S. embassy in Thailand.
“Everybody was very impressed by the modernization of the equipment/facilities and the competency of the teaching staff,” Yamfang said. “A few of them mentioned to me that they wouldn’t mind coming back to the PSTC for future training.”
Another group from the Special Forces for Security and Protection (SFSP), a Saudi Arabian tourism police agency, visited the training center on May 19 to learn more about how Collin College integrated academic and practical education in criminal justice, law enforcement, fire science, and emergency medical services. One of the objectives of the visit was to develop knowledge and learn best practices for interdisciplinary, multi-use facility design and management.
As a shared training facility for the law enforcement and fire sciences programs at Collin College, the PSTC offers state-of-the-art facilities and joint training exercises between first responder agencies. The SFSP, a tourism policing agency in Saudi Arabia, plans to build more training facilities soon.
The SFSP visit was hosted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP) as one stop on a study tour that included Collin College as an example of a regional training facility. The delegation, which was attending a convention of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards of Training (IADLEST), also visited state training facilities in Georgia and the Federal Bureau of Investigation training facilities in Virginia.
“Collin College’s Public Safety Training Center is widely recognized as a center of excellence with IADLEST, and through our affiliation with IADLEST we have worked with (CCLEA Director) Scott Donaldson on a number of things in the past,” said Joseph Trindal, senior law enforcement development coordinator for the U.S. Department of Justice and an ICITAP contractor. Trindal was heavily involved in organizing the delegation’s visit to the United States.
The Saudi Arabian delegation was very engaged with Donaldson as they toured the training center, asking about facility design and maintenance costs and expressing admiration for the facility’s 50- and 100-yard indoor rifle ranges, reality-based training center, and the burn buildings used by the fire sciences academy.
Donaldson said that exchanges of information like these are helpful to all parties, and he is thankful to Collin College leadership for allowing these international partnerships.
“It’s that willingness of our staff and our executive leadership team to support global policing that is beneficial to all stakeholders,” Donaldson said. “We understand that we don’t know everything – that no one knows everything – and being able to come together to help each other out is important.”
The college’s and Donaldson’s efforts are drawing praise within the U.S. as well. Michael Howell, an associate professor with the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, recently contacted Donaldson about the possibility of partnering on future projects or collaborating on courses. Discussions of what those collaborations might be are ongoing, but Howell indicated he respected the work of the CCLEA in a recent letter to Donaldson.
“You have set a standard in the State of Texas with your facility and how you administer and guide academy classes, in-service classes, and liaison with local, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies,” Howell said.