Fargo Police Academy Current Recruits Will Be The Only Recruits Through The Academy For The 2025 Year

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) — This year the Fargo Police Academy has twelve recruits ready to take on the lead of helping the Fargo community.

“Well as of today it’s been pretty fun. We got to start doing a little bit of some defensive tactics working with our cuffs. So that was probably the highlight of today,” said Leah Jans, Fargo Police Academy Recruit.

Since 2020, the academy has had a series of recruits come in through the Fargo run police academy. Previously, anyone wanting to become a Fargo police officer had to go to the city of Bismarck to complete training.

“With the academy really seeing our officers come in as citizens and evolving over the course of the academy into Fargo police officers is truly an honor. It’s really fantastic to see,” said Sgt. Ian Kristan, Fargo Police Department Training and Development Unit.

Recruits complete a 18 week paid training course that is divided up into three phases: knowledge, skill building, and acclimation. After completion they are then sent to the Police Training Program to complete another 16 week course of doing on calls with a training officer by their side.

“The program is divided up into four different phases. So at each one of those phases the expectations for that officer start to go up. During that sixteen weeks there’s also two formal evaluations that take place to do determine is the officer where they need to be at in their training and ultimately are they ready to take calls on their own,” said Sgt. Brandon Kerr, Neighborhood Services Division at Fargo Police Department.

Recruits currently in the Police Academy have sixteen more weeks before they go through the Police Training Program.

This year’s recruits will be the only recruits for 2025 as positions in the Fargo Police Department will be full.