Experiential approach

Instead of simply offering traditional types of training, the Patrol Officer Training Program at the school allows candidates to exercise their future profession by becoming part of a police department school. The police station school is made to look like and is managed like the real thing. Candidates enrolled at the school become part of this department whose structure, organization, hierarchy and operations resemble those of an authentic Québec police station.

By carrying out professional duties, future police officers are better able to assimilate the knowledge acquired in college and to learn and put into practice various policing techniques.

Approximately half of the program consists of integration into a simulated working environment. Over a third of the training course is devoted to learning technical disciplines such as :

• firearms exercises;
• emergency vehicle driving techniques;
• means of physical intervention, including techniques used to maintain law and order during public demonstrations or riot situations.

In each of these disciplines, candidates take part in scenarios that simulate realistic situations encountered in policing. In addition to the police station, candidates have at their disposition laboratories and simulation rooms as well as specific training which together contribute to the development and facilitate the acquisition of competencies targeted by the program. During all training activities, staff instructors and resource people from different disciplines act as supervisors and guides to candidates, helping them to acquire professional competencies and to put them into practice in an environment that resembles the real-life situation.