Palmer PD officer attends FBI training

PALMER — Sgt. Shayne La Croix doesn’t often go out of state for training.

“My time is better spent on the road,” said the Palmer Police Department sergeant.

But an opportunity to attend the FBI’s national academy in Quantico, Va., isn’t something to be passed up.

La Croix, who returned from the training March 14, said that each year usually only one Alaska police officer attends the FBI’s training course. As far as he knows, no other Palmer police officer has gone through the training, although he knows of one Alaska State Trooper in the Valley who has.

How did he like the 10-week course?

“I enjoyed it immensely,” he said, adding that by the end it was good to come home. “Ten weeks is a long time to spend away from home.”

The academy is set up similar to a college, he said. There are classes to attend during the day and papers and book reports to write at night. Officers live in dorms. Unlike most college courses, the FBI academy is set up on a pass-fail basis. Last month, La Croix received word he passed.

The academy is similar to what FBI agents go through, but geared toward local law enforcement. Officers take classes in what interests them. In La Croix’s case, those topics include police administration and community programs.

The administration part helps him manage the shift he supervises and may be useful down the road if he wants to move up in the ranks. The community courses focus on programs officers can run with local kids or, to take an example from the Palmer Police Department’s roster of programs, area senior citizens.

La Croix said he most enjoyed having an opportunity to discuss daily issues every cop faces with officers from around the country.

“The best part was us being able to talk to someone from, say, Louisiana who had a similar problem but solved it differently,” La Croix said.

Those are lessons he can bring back and apply in the Valley.

Oddly enough, one of the things he didn’t get to visit was FBI headquarters — not that the agency wasn’t ready to let him in.

“There was a tour, but it conflicted with one of my classes,” La Croix said..